Sadie Dupuis is still a hot mess—“like, infinite degrees,” to be exact. On “Six Ways,” her humblebrags surf programmed drumrolls that tick like a faulty gas stove and riffs that punch like the ones on Sleigh Bells’ debut. It’s been over a decade since the Speedy Ortiz record where Dupuis dubbed herself “caller of the shots” and “the best at being second place”; now, the cool-loser laureate fancies herself an “armchair head cheerleader.” It’s a juxtaposition that sums up Dupuis’ niche as a hardworking oddball putting her slacker vocal fry and poetry MFA to use in tongue-twisting, slice-of-life pop rock songs.
Three years after the most recent Speedy Ortiz record, Rabbit Rabbit, Dupuis returns to her side project, Sad13, for 16 delightfully cluttered minutes. 1331 sometimes comes across like indie rock’s answer to Whack World: Besides ultra-short songs, the two records share a capacity for quick-witted wordplay and emotional worldbuilding that elevates them beyond exercises in economy. Their brevity emphasizes Dupuis’ refusal to waste a moment. Her maximalist approach in miniscule proportions makes 1331’s songs feel like Polly Pocket-sized funhouses.
Dupuis’ introspection is always tethered to a greater sense of community. Her work as a United Musicians and Allied Workers organizer casts its influence over songs like “Pretty Little Lifers” and “Friend of the P”; the day-outs of sustaining a career in a precarious industry and resisting leftist infighting bubble up in dense one-liners and roughed-up indietronica. “Work won’t love you back, so why’d I take work to dinner and buy its ticket to the show?” she wonders. “Watermelon Manicure,” an ode to Palestinian resilience and solidarity, recalls Sad13’s 2021 collaboration with Canadian rapper-producer Backxwash in its metallic crunch and clipped snarls.
1331 has a way of dragging your focus to details—swishy synths that sound as if they’re made of nylon, tinnitus-mimicking chimes, squeaky rubbing against unstrummed strings. Dupuis still shreds on 1331, but her guitar takes a supporting role this time, churning along with the industrial percussion that powers the catchy but often chorusless tracks. The hooks hit with such precision that they don’t need to repeat to be memorable—the loopy “Hopeful But Not Optimistic” is a notable exception, consisting mostly of a girl-groupy refrain (“Hope so, hope so, hope so-oh-woah”) that punctuates each micro-verse with a bubble-lettered exclamation point.
Dupuis closes track two, “Art Institute,” with a sort of secular prayer: “Hold me by the heart and say, ‘Today’s gonna rock.’” A little over a decade ago, Dupuis led Speedy Ortiz on a charity tour benefitting the Girls Rock Camp Foundation. A friend who attended a Girls Rock Camp as a kid told me that, to empower young girls and help curb their impulse to over-apologize, Girls Rock Camp required campers to say “I rock” each time they said “Sorry” for something that wasn’t actually harmful. In our friend group, “I rock” (or more often, “We rock”) became a jokey mantra, a tongue-in-cheek affirmation for stressful moments, and a roundabout way of saying, “Thank you for being kind and patient with me.” We say it with as much sarcasm as it takes to mean it. Dupuis has said that the 13 in Sad13 represents “teenage moodiness”; paired with a 31, which the opening track implies is the age of a deceased friend (“Now I’m the older one,” Dupuis sings)—the album title becomes a palindrome containing naivete and wisdom, silliness and sincerity, hope and despair. There’s room for all of it.
