You Better Have An Awfully Big Boat

Speedy Ortiz “Raising the Skate”

Sadie Dupuis has a very ‘90s indie rock guitar style – it’s all winding melodies, but with chunky loud bits for emphasis. You don’t get a lot of this style from younger musicians today, so it’s very refreshing to my aging ears. But while Dupuis and her band have an aesthetic tether to that past, I think they’re very much a band of this particular moment. Dupuis’ lyrics are unapolegetically feminist, but not in a way that feels particularly transgressive – her thoughts, observations, and proclamations are more matter of fact. “Raising the Skate” is a song that talks back to people who condescend to her, and rejects the way society pushes women to take less credit for their accomplishments because a confident woman is terrifying to insecure men. A lot of bands write “anthemic” songs, and the lyrics don’t really say much, but this is an anthemic song with lyrics that deserve to be so emphatic and empowering in their expression.

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