Sad13 - Haunted Painting [Limited Edition Pink Color Vinyl]

For nearly a decade, Sadie Dupuis has been celebrated for her literary lyrics, accomplished guitar playing, and embodied ethos of empowerment, whether with rock band Speedy Ortiz or the pop-oriented solo project Sad13, which debuted in 2016 with Lizzo co-feature "Basement Queens." Haunted Painting, Sad13's second album and first for Dupuis' label Wax Nine marks her return to artmaking.

"Some of these songs feel like emotions that came from a cloud, and I was trying to translate them," she says. But the scope of a Sad13 song is rarely only personal. As ever, Sad13 weaves timely societal critiques into rushing hooks and whip-smart wordplay that's all still a blast: riffer "WTD" is about climate gentrification and billionaires' consequent desire to colonize the ocean and space. Album opener "Into the Catacombs," which melds orchestral strings with glitched-out horror sounds, came after a 2016 trip to Buenos Aires' human rights memorial ESMA with her mother, Diane Dupuis. Haunted Painting braids the political and the poetic, interests that extend to Dupuis' recent work with No Music for ICE, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, and as editor of the newly-established Wax Nine poetry journal.

It all finds Dupuis, already one of the sharpest lyricists of her generation, leveling up as an arranger and producer. Drawing inspiration from 1980s British pop-rock à la Tracy Ullman and Joan Armatrading, as well as the contemporary digital gloss of post-PC Music electronica, she calls Haunted Painting "decidedly non-minimal," mixing technicolor synth-pop and math-rock dynamism. Accompanied throughout by drummer Zoë Brecher – and, on two songs, by an eight-piece orchestra – Dupuis handles all other instrumentation herself, expanding her palette of guitar, bass, and synth to include organ, lap steel, marimba, glockenspiel, sitar, autoharp, theremin, "toys, trash, and ephemera."

She worked exclusively with women engineers; among those credited are mixer Sarah Tudzin (Weyes Blood, Illuminati Hotties), tracking engineers Erin Tonkon (David Bowie, Esperanza Spalding) and Maryam Qudus (Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, mxmtoon), and Dupuis' long term collaborator, mastering legend Emily Lazar (Beck, Dolly Parton). The process allowed for a diversity of timbres, as well as guest vocal contributions from Helado Negro's Roberto Lange, Deerhoof's Satomi Matsuzaki, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, and Pile's Rick Maguire.

1. Into the Catacombs
2. WTD?
3. Hysterical
4. Ghost (of a Good Time)
5. Oops...!
6. Good Grief
7. Ruby Wand
8. With Baby
9. The Crow
10. Take Care
11. Market Hotel