Kevin Bronson on September 29th, 2017

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* Updated, 12:30 p.m.

“I walk fast, I talk fast, you better listen fast, or get left behind,” Lauren Ruth Ward sings in her new single, “Well, Hell,” a three-minute broadside in which she declares, “I have a lot of say.” To anybody who’s seen Ward and her quartet — including guitarist Eduardo Rivera, bassist Liv Slingerland and drummer India Pascucci — around town the past year, this is not a news bulletin. Sexuality, identity, hypocrisy: They’re all topics on the table for the pint-sized dynamo and her raspy, Joplinesque wail, wrapping itself in and around her co-writer Rivero’s guitar licks. “‘Well, Hell’ is an auto-biographical song that deals with frustrations, both with my upbringing and with society as a whole, that have long been forgiven but not forgotten,” Ward says. “Even though it’s one of the shorter songs in length on the record, there’s a lot that I’m letting off my chest in those three minutes, so much so that I feel the need to thank the listener for allowing me to unload.” The tune is the title track of Ward’s forthcoming full-length, whose official release date is still to be announced. The album gets an unofficial christening tonight at the Bootleg Theater.

* Today, it was announced that Ward has joined the small roster on the fledgling label Weekday Records, a partnership with Sony Music.

||| Stream: “Well, Hell”

||| Also: Stream “Blue Collar Sex Kitten”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Did I Offend You?

||| Live: Lauren Ruth Ward headlines the Bootleg Theater tonight. The show is sold out.

||| Previously: “Make Love to Myself,” live at Chinatown Summer Nights