#Audrey zee whitesides

[rcmndedlisten]

Speedy Ortiz - “Scabs”

Photo by Shervin Lainez

At the moment, Speedy Ortiz and Sad13 frontwoman Sadie Dupuis is on a nationwide book tour supporting her latest poetry release, Cry Perfume. She loves her words and her prose, a lot! Have you seen her annual stack of books read? That adulation is really beginning to permeate her songwriting approach as well on “Scabs”, the first new Speedy music since 2018's Twerp Verse. Leave it to Dupuis to make its tongue-twisted callout on performative politics (“Who do you wanna prove you’re a big dog to? / You turn the screw but you’re using the wrong size tool”) sound easy to fall from the lips while executing use of the phrase “comment slop” and “monosyllables” in a way that defines one another from ends both ugly and eloquent -- much like the most vocal of the virtue signaling bunch dressing up doing absolutely nothing as something more. Beyond Dupuis upping her wordsmith game, so has the band in its latest form, with guitarist Andy Molholt, bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides, and drummer Joey Doubek sounding even more effortlessly elastic between Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties' bursting pop production. In a world tangled up in its own words, Speedy Ortiz are making sense of what’s really being said in it all.

Speedy Ortiz’ “Scabs” single is available now on Wax Nine Records.

[dordourandi]

[dissecthebird]

ok but what if you bought the t-shirt. what if you did do that. would that rock or what.

it IS a good t shirt! i just bought this instead

[image description: a black t shirt with text handwritten in white all-caps text reading “I DON’T WANT TO LOOK OR BE CIS.” /end image description]

[laurellynnleake]

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing @malblum kick off their fall tour with Titus Andronicus at AS220 in Providence! That’s Mal Blum in the middle on guitar, and I believe Audrey Zee Whitesides (left, also on guitar), Barrett Lindgren (bass), and Ricardo Lagomasino (drums). It was an exhilarating short set and the art-gallery crowd was WAY into it! I drew one of Audrey’s guitars while waiting for the show to start - then afterwards I came home and did some quick edits with a white paint pen thingie, while the experience was still fresh. Later I realized no one actually played the guitar I drew but I still had a lot of fun drawing it :P

[innovacancy]

Mal Blum AS220, Providence, RI 22 October 2019 Pity Boy is one of the most introspective, human records not only of the year but of the decade. While singer-songwriter Mal Blum’s tales are often born from their experiences of transitioning to the non-binary person they are today, navigating a world in which they feel and are particularly invisible, these auditory vignettes are portraits of the human condition that will feel immediately familiar, sometimes painfully so, to all who’ve found themselves having a hard time navigating the world and relationships. Their first album since 2015’s You Look a Lot Like Me, Blum’s return in 2019 with Pity Boy has seen them tour both as a headliner and in support of acts like Lucy Dacus and Titus Andronicus. It’s the latter tour that brought them to Providence’s AS220 performance space on a rainy night in mid-October, an array of young people at the front of the room eagerly awaiting one of the most exciting voices in music who sings about the emerging world (emerging not as a genesis, but into the public eye more than ever) of living life unmoored from traditional gender constructs.  Through the years, Blum’s music has expanded from quiet, acoustic-led indie rock to Pity Boy’s bristling, fiery punk energy. It’s immediately evident that this is the first album Blum recorded as a band rather than solo. Their vulnerability has always been the heart of their music, opening up to the audience, and even with peppier arrangements, louder guitars, and a more confident delivery, Blum’s heart is open and on display as much as ever. Self-dissection of this caliber is rare, admirable, and community-building, projecting a voice in which LGBT+ people can find validation and from which those of us outside that community can glean understanding. Blum humorously introduces ‘See Me’ as a song about being a “trans ghost”, which elicits a laugh from the audience due to the gig’s proximity to Halloween, but the humor belies the truth that as not only a trans but also non-binary person, Blum faces a level of marginalization that most, this writer included, can never truly fathom. Visibility is a major theme of Pity Boy. On ‘Things Still Left to Say’ Blum frames it personally: “Do you miss me when I’m not around? Because you don’t see me when I’m here,” they sing. ‘See Me’ finds a more generalized sentiment against the world at large: “Why cant they see me? Why can’t they see – I was right there”.  This categorical erasure sits alongside plenty of other human drama as well. “Hurt people, hurt people – yes I think I know the type,” Blum says on ‘Salt Flats’, the slow-burning, excoriating heart of the album. “Twenty-seven is eleven, just on different meds,” they say, encompassing the album’s theme of cycles all too hard to break. Another heartrendingly pointed moment on the record arrives in ‘Not My Job’, where Blum contemplates killing off their “better”, altruistic self to finally end escape a cycle of codependency, painting a picture of someone strung up by their own good intentions.

Despite Blum’s clear skill for articulating sadness, there’s a joy and black humor to the music that balances out their continued exploration of life’s difficulties. The final tracks of Pity Boy are titled ‘Gotta Go’ and ‘Maybe I’ll Wait’, a playful and meta self-negation, and during every song the band is wild and animated, no one more so than guitarist Audrey Zee Whitesides, who jumps up and down infused with the energy of fast songs like ‘Things Still Left to Say’. There’s pain in Mal Blum’s world, to be sure, but it’s not without hope. Wounded but defiant, Pity Boy is a picture of someone connecting the dots of their own life, a snapshot of the pain, understanding, and healing all in one.

[recommendedlisten]

Video: Speedy Ortiz - “Cutco”

Hold your beer, DIY indie scene, because Speedy Ortiz are back to remind you of how you, too, can go from twining out rad riffs from your bedroom into house shows, underground spaces, and eventually becoming one of the past decade’s most consistently dependable rock forces. In honor of the band’s 10th anniversary, they’ll be reissuing a remixed and remastered version of their first two releases, the Cop Kicker EP and The Death of Speedy Ortiz, as a double LP The Death of Speedy Ortiz & Cop Kicker…Forever digitally this November and physically in January.

For those of you who feel entitled to getting a buzz from your music fixes regardless of what other disasters in humanity are going on in the world, the band is offering up an apt substitute with the news in a self-directed music video directed for one the formative day highlights “Cutco”. If you’ve been rocking with Speedy Ortiz from the very start, you probably know its early releases were originally the solo outlet of frontperson Sadie Dupuis, but in this Black Witch Project-inspired spooky season visual, bandmates Andy Molhotl and Audrey Zee Whitesides help bring the timeline full circle with their alcohol-free musical snacks. Watch it below...

Speedy Ortiz’s The Death of Speedy Ortiz & Cop Kicker…Forever will be released November 12th digitally and January 28th on Carpark Records.

[morhdd]

gay trans lady punk rock, never stop.

i fucking love this band.

[newnoisemagazine]

Fear Of A Queer Planet: Featuring Audrey Zee Whitesides

Audrey Zee Whitesides is a New Yorker by way of the South, an embodiment of DIY punk ethos with an academic background in poetry, and an artist with the ability to make slyly political statements in a deeply personal and irresistibly relatable way. She is a multi-instrumentalist, lending her vocal, lyrical, and guitar prowess to the queercore/transcore trio Little Waist; playing bass for the momentous punk rock darlings, Worriers, and incisive singer-songwriter Mal Blum; and helming her own acoustic solo project as Audrey Otherway.

Read the full column here.

[rcmndedlisten]

Speedy Ortiz - “Ghostwriter”

Photo by Chris Carreon

There can’t be a nü metal revival if it never really went away to begin with. What’s been more so interesting beyond the reemerging of some of the era’s cringiest fashion choices as modern cool or young artists literally hitting copy and paste to replicate the sound as their own has been hearing how the genre's influence from decades ago low key molded the shape of sound in higher brow bands who probably wouldn’t have made the Family Values Tour cut back in the day. Still, their appreciation for big, heavy riffs and bastardized static bleeds into something meticulated as more bookwormish, as it does on “Ghostwriter”, the latest preview from Speedy Ortiz’s fourth studio effort, Rabbit Rabbit. Lead lyrical scribe, vocalist and guitarist Sadie Dupuis, guitarist Andy Molholt, bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides, and drummer Joey Doubek weaponize unrelenting teenage aggro in the listen to their advantage even when a world in decay pushes your limits to fatigue. “I’m tired of anger / How to move on? / Even comets are staying in one spot.” Still think climate change is a hoax? If it isn't the record heat or floods, then Speedy Ortiz burning up by way of metaphorical flame patterned shirt should push the scientific evidence for it to the forefront.

Directed by: Alex Ross Perry

Speedy Ortiz’ Rabbit Rabbit will be released September 1st on Wax Nine.

[dordourandi]

Mal Blum and The Blum

7/7/17

The Silent Barn

[30xlace]

Audrey Zee Whitesides

Honest?: Nature Preserves in Contemporary Culture

Pay no attention to art                        The moon, large in living, is reflected             for its familiarity and ease of preparation                               The thesis is this: a controlling impulse,             often moral                  And a continuous circular brushing             The morning, poxy-fingered, asks of us             I think of beginnings. I am weak             before a helpful and funny sailor             History argument For example, I call it “garden” and “un-garden”             because “un-garden” in the natural             human state             Whether or not one reads Genesis; possibly             At fault in the quaking earth             There are almost but not quite sufficient legends             Overhearing, “She’s crazy on birth control”             The first things are not simple, though tamed             Moving without opening, because paint             is applied in a suggestive fashion             A strut, a turn, something just shy             enough to believe             She hears a swan of static and is able             to keep brushing uncharged teeth             A place to keep not going For example, a row of bushes easily perceived             “at attention”             My dad, forester, explained,             “We have to cut or burn down             the large trees so the undergrowth             can have a chance             We use earthen ditches to control the fire,             which cannot cross them”             Sales, points of reference             When history, argument             She comes up A smell of chemical rose             Even a garden communicates;             perhaps I should say even an un-garden             communicates given my human bias             Subdued, paid enough attention,             though I’d deny it             On the other hand, stimulation argument             The ground is hot, only too fat in the middle             A tightening over strata             Words to defuse a situation             Then look back             How unfortunately timed, and the needle             slips the design             Workshop notes: fix flat characterization             So I became more, with my personal impatience,             audience with dress eyes, little extra fee             Everyone was very excited             for summer to begin, so much so             that they forgot ribbons and uncelebrated             their hair went             Growing over the cobblestones,             because they are there to follow             Hold on; adolescent, disregarded Finally, pay no art             I hath seen infirmity in the less             “A maid,” she walked, “youthfully”             And nature was it drew it to me             The words had been full             and the water bird most astonishing in its use             I abstained, moving into the familiar’s witch

[birdsoflace]

"She hears a swan of static and is able to keep brushing uncharged teeth A place to keep not going"

[fuckyeahqueermusic]

Audrey Zee Whitesides-"No Recognition"

First off, apologies for the awful video. I took it with my phone and am bad at filming things. Sorry!

But, more importantly, last night I went to Bureau of General Services Queer Division, an awesome queer bookstore near Chinatown in New York to see my friend and fellow Syracusian, Elliott DeLine, read from his first book and a new piece he's been working on (and if you haven't read any of his stuff, I highly encourage it. He definitely has a voice and perspective that I personally haven't seen in a lot of trans fiction and autobiographical writing).

Audrey from one of my new favorite bands, Little Waist, also performed a short four song acoustic set, playing a few Little Waist songs. She also played a cover of the John Prine song, "Paradise," as an ode to her home of Northern Kentucky, which was the source of the toxic chemical spill affecting West Virginia. Listen to it, it's an amazing and heartbreaking folk song. And if you aren't listening to Little Waist yet, what are you waiting for? It's good stuff. 

If you're in the NYC area, Little Waist is playing a show this coming Tuesday with several other trans punk bands to benefit the Brooklyn Transcore stage at Punk Island this year

[rcmndedlisten]

Speedy Ortiz - “You S02″

Photo by Shervin Lainez

Speedy Ortiz are not old, but they have been around long enough to warrant the wisdom they preach surrounding the culture and industry, for a lack of better words, of being indie rock stars. Citing seedy characters are nothing new in the Sadie Dupuis’ songwriting inspo board, but on “You S02″, the second single from the band’s newly-announced fifth full-length, Rabbit Rabbit, her lyricism levels up in its execution with even more detailed portraits of them in the scene -- a certain kind of legend in their own mind who enjoys the advantages of their past peaks, but whose actions don’t contribute to empowering the rest of the community with their wealth. “It’s no small claim to say your acolyte / Is a voice in your head you drown out when your work’s not sitting right / Head to your weekend home, pass out for the strike / Is this what love’s like?,” she wonders. The best part about this track isn’t just hearing Dupuis throwing due shade, however. With the band now re-solidifying themselves as creative equals between Dupuis, guitarist Andy Molholt, bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides, and drummer Joey Doubek, the mechanics of shrugging off their foes are popping off in a big way in their spell of professionally vexed zoomies, add in Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin’s touch of production gloss. This is to say that this season of Speedy Ortiz is a must-watch...

Directed by: Elle Schneider

Speedy Ortiz’ Rabbit Rabbit will be released September 1st on Wax Nine.