Foil Deer

Foil Deer is the sophomore album from Massachusetts Speedy Ortiz. "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss," Sadie Dupuis sings on first single "Raising the Skate," invoking in spirit one half of the Carter-Knowles clan and echoing the other's wordplay. And wordplay makes sense, considering Dupuis the band's songwriter, guitarist, and frontwoman spent the band's first few years teaching writing at UMass Amherst. She's drawn to the dense complexity of Pynchon, the dreamlike geometry of Bolaño, the confounded yearning of Plath all attributes you could easily apply to the band's 2013 debut Major Arcana, which fans and press alike have invested with a sense of purpose and merit uncommon in contemporary guitar rock.