Speedy Ortiz, 'Rabbit Rabbit' 

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• Courtesy
• Speedy Ortiz, Rabbit Rabbit

(Carpark Records, CD, digital, vinyl)

Halfway through a verse on "Cry Cry Cry," the fifth track on the new Speedy Ortiz album, Rabbit Rabbit, singer-songwriter and guitarist Sadie Dupuis drops the kind of lyric that can stop you dead in your tracks.

"I know my way 'round the stats on pain," Dupuis sings in a deceptive, almost cloyingly sweet tone, "but I never stop and feel it. / Cut my hand, make a blood pact, / Then when I bite my tongue I'll mean it."

A shift from emotional circumspection to opening the floodgates is a running theme on Rabbit Rabbit. Dupuis, who has garnered praise for her band's punk-meets-indie-pop sound and her detailed, confessional lyrics, has never been a closed book. Yet Speedy Ortiz reach new levels of complexity on their fourth record.

The Philadelphia-via-Northampton, Mass., outfit, which formed in 2011 as a backing band for Dupuis' solo songs, has perfected the art of making the sophisticated sound simple. Speedy Ortiz songs shift in time, feature strange key changes and cleverly dynamic rhythmic pushes, and generally eschew all the tried-and-true tropes of indie guitar rock. Yet, for all the advanced tools on display, the band also pumps out the anthems.

"You SO2" is chock-full of weirdness and hairpin-turn tempo changes, and it's simultaneously ready to be blasted out of a speeding car with the windows down. "Scabs" picks up that energy and runs with it, sounding like the wet dream of '80s college radio rock meeting the alt-rock of the "120 Minutes" era.

"Who do you wanna prove you're a big dog to?" Dupuis wonders on the chorus. "You turn the screw, but you're using the wrong size tool."

Standing up to power abusers is a central thread in Dupuis' writing on Rabbit Rabbit. In a recent interview with New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, Dupuis revealed that she was abused by a member of her family when she was young.

The singer-songwriter, who has painted covers for many of the band's records and written two books of poetry, handles emotions ranging from confusion to love to anger with a mixture of artistic mystery and documentary-style reality. As the record reaches its coda, the raging rock monster "Ghostwriter," Dupuis is ready to throw it all on a pyre and light the fire.

"How to grow up?" she sings. "Lately I don't really push much / I'm tired of anger / How to move on? / Even comets are staying in one spot."

It's the summation of a 13-track emotional wringer of an album that bristles with energy, intention and urgency. The album's title comes from the old farming practice of saying "rabbit rabbit" at the beginning of the month for luck. Rabbit Rabbit is a good luck totem, therapy session and late-summer banger, all in one record.

Rabbit Rabbit is available on all major streaming platforms. Speedy Ortiz swing through Winooski on Monday, September 11, for a show at the Monkey House.