With Foil Deer, Speedy Ortiz fully owns its style, quirks and neuroses on a level that would have been unimaginable circa 2013’s Major Arcana. Retaining a charming, inside-out tunelessness, the Northampton, Mass., quartet—coyly enough—permits tinges of saccharine to crowd the sour, and displays a newly intuitive sense of dynamics.
That guitarist/primary songwriter Sadie Dupuis recognized the need for Betty Rizzo and Angie Tempura archetypes in mod-indie is a bonus. Even at their most confident, Throwing Muses or Helium would never have written as backhandedly aggro a hoodied She-Ra anthem as “Raising The Skate.” Her ever tack-sharp mixed metaphors flow like wine; crunchy “The Graduates,” anti-tempo “Zig” and shove punk-y “Swell Content” passive-aggressively teem with them.
Elsewhere, low-end and noise-funk reign on the turgid, uncharacteristic “Puffer,” while “Dvrk Wvrld” (an uncomfortable, stormy dirge that seems to revolve around a rape) might contain the most vulnerable lyrics Dupuis has ever written.
—Raymond Cummings
