We’ve written about Chicago‘s Upstairs a few times in recent years. They first came onto our radar back in 2018 with Our Ass Is In The Jackpot Now, an EP which introduced what we described as their “verbose brand of indie rock that can’t quite decide between cynical detachment and sincere shouting.” Nowhere was this clearer than closer ‘Trust the Process’, “a frantically wordy sermon that veers between hip sing-speak and momentous outpouring,” introducing the band’s penchant for smart and often humorous writing, not to mention their urgent, half-crazed momentum.
Now Upstairs have released their debut full-length album, I Could Die Whenever. The record was first announced back in the summer when the band unveiled lead single ‘Spider City’, a song which showed a real development of the sound without losing any of the frantic, inventive energy. Again the balance between cathartic and crazed paled into insignificance, offering the Upstairs style as one of the most idiosyncratic and fitting takes on the present moment. As we put it in a preview:
Racing into life to be as busy and fleet-footed as any downtown street, the single is part stream of consciousness, part city-made-song—a non-stop tumble of dreams and confessions both wryly black and unashamedly gleaming. A force that pulls you in and wears you down into a fine sand, all ready for someone else to walk over, again and again and again.
Not that I Could Die Whenever is always set to this frenetic speed. The folk influences of opener ‘Baptistina’ has a more reflective quality, at least until things ramp up on the second half and the track finds a runaway momentum, while the affectionate country sensibilities of ‘Pastry Park, Ohio’ finds Upstairs in their warmest, calmest state to date. The atmospheric title track is another moment of respite, a shimmering slice of ambient tones and field recordings that coalesces into a ruminative swirl. ‘Miramar’ carries this spirit through, a slow-building, heartfelt track that nurtures small sparks of sincerity and watches as the flames grow into the triumphant climax.
Miramar skylights hold me in
hold my byline to the wind
because I will make the difference.
I will go the crucial distance.
I will make the difference.
I will go the crucial distance
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But as we’ve come to expect from Upstairs, things are rarely so simple. The opening verse of ‘Baptistina’ might appear relaxed in terms of sound, but the lyrics tell a different story. “Well they tore apart the tofu girl with their bare hands last night,” goes the opening line in a nod to Springsteen. “And they’ll blow up her studio apartment / out in National Landing arms wrenched behind their backs.” The sound takes on a new quality, an ironic juxtaposition where easy-going warmth holds up dislodged eyeballs, a whole world drenched in blood. As the track grows in rhythm, so too does this violent energy, capturing a world of organophosphate-rich tomatoes and suicide by self-immolation caught on film. A Pynchonian world, one that might appear cartoonish if it wasn’t so recognisable.
The entirety of I Could Die Whenever is dedicated to building this world in all of its hyperactive detail. A confusing place that leaves its inhabitants unsure whether to protest or embrace the dystopian hellscape, a mood captured by ‘Ryder’, or just laugh at the sheer lunacy of it all. Which is where the Upstairs wit really shines, be it ‘Baja Blast’ with its Hold Steady-esque invention (“I’ve been trying to get the kids to call me Baja Blast / Because I’m no longer available at gas stations”), or ‘Spider City’ and its black humour fury (“I want to live where the green, green grass grows! / I want to die with my welfare in escrow!”). The overarching mood of the album is right there the title itself—that liminal space between giddy joy and consuming dread that emerged with the A-bomb and never really left.
I Could Die Whenever is out now and available from the Upstairs Bandcamp page.