Sad13 – Locust Releaser & Mean, Vindictive, Arrogant
Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, one of the most prolific songwriters and critically lauded guitarists of her time, recently announced her first Sad13 project in 5+ years. 1331, a 13-track mixtape of “1 minute long-ish songs,” will be out on Friday, July 10th under Sadie’s electropop moniker and alter ego, Sad13.
A few weeks ago she shared the album’s first three tracks, and today she shares two more ahead of release on Friday. Activists for housing and trans rights were deploying insects, admired on alt-R&B soundscape “Locust Releaser,” while Dupuis is lamenting leftist factionalism on shimmery “Mean, Vindictive, Arrogant.”
“I wrote ‘Locust Releaser’ at the start of the cicada double-brood emergence in 2024, considering biblical plagues and two individual cases of housing advocates releasing bees and cockroaches,” explains Dupuis. “In the years since, I’ve read stories of maggots, crickets, and other critters released to protest genocide, transphobes, and police. Bugs: innocent, but I admire the clarity of conviction needed to incite nuisance.”
1331 will be out this Friday, July 10th via Exploding In Sound Records, the label that released Speedy Ortiz’s Sports EP in 2012.
Rooted in her home base of Philly, Dupuis made 1331 totally DIY, the sole performer and recording engineer on one of her projects for the first time in fifteen years. Most of 1331’s writing came in spring 2024, a patch Dupuis calls a “mini nervous breakdown.” Speedy Ortiz records are often personal-as-political, but 2023’s Rabbit Rabbit dealt with childhood abuse. Promoting it felt brutal, and she realized she needed further processing, distinct from songwriting. “Making music is magic, a hurts-so-bad-it’s-good potion,” she says. “But therapy is different, and I didn’t wanna mine it for more art.” She made it a goal to write daily songs around a minute long, a rewarding game to relieve challenges posed in counseling, and trained her lens and lyrical subject matter on her community in Philadelphia rather than her own biography. The Sad13 tracking process stalled, however, after a bicycle accident shattered Dupuis’ elbow in June 2024, requiring reconstructive surgeries and a year of rehab. After twenty-plus years of playing, Rolling Stone had recently included Dupuis in their Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was displaying her guitar. Suddenly, doctors warned she might never play again. Grueling training put her back on tour three months later, but nerve damage kept her off the computer, postponing Sad13 recording. “My body didn’t have the juice,” she recalls. “But tracking in little bursts over more time gave me broader influences.”
The resulting and hard-won mixtape is 1331, which melds mindsets and melodies across time: whimsical fun amid noisy fury, sophisticated balance shaping wild catharsis. It’s concise, delightfully weird music, a catchy rush that’s distinctly Sad13.
Sad13 On Tour
7/9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool w/ New Idea Society, Russian Baths
7/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s w/ Hurry, Dina Hashem
7/11 – Malden, MA @ FACES w/ New Idea Society, Real Beaut
7/17 – virtual @ Blue Stoop – Verse Chorus Voice, a lyrics & songwriting masterclass
7/24 – Somerville, MA @ NICE, a fest w/ Krill, Downtown Boys, Dari Bay, Mal Devisa
#sad13