Katie Stelmanis’ career has been defined by evolution—performing with bands and as a solo artist, experimenting across art-punk and electro-pop, and working with varied collaborators like Fucked Up and Death in Vegas. But despite all the change-ups, her music has always made use of several key elements: emotionally indulgent lyrics about the pain of heartbreak; a showstopping voice dripping with vibrato; and the ability to pinpoint the sweet spot between uplifting dance music production and sobering, shadow-dappled indie sensibilities.
In the synth-pop project Austra, which she started in 2009, Stelmanis has made tinkering with her formula an integral part of her appeal as a songwriter, continuously recalibrating these building blocks and coming up with slightly different results each time. Austra’s 2017 record Future Politics, for example, used techno and house influences to meditate on Trump-era anxiety; they followed it up with HiRUDiN, which indulged the baroque flourishes of Stelmanis’ earlier material. But with Austra’s fifth LP, the energetic and grandiose Chin Up Buttercup, she may have finally perfected the recipe.
The trebly undulations in Stelmanis’ piercing voice gives everything she touches a certain “teardrops on the dance floor” quality, but there are sequences in Chin Up Buttercup that are more club-ready than anything Austra has previously released. Alt-pop artists culling from the annals of dance music to process their melancholy is nothing new, but here, Stelmanis sets herself apart by purposefully flipping from niche genre to niche genre, flexing her production skills. It feels like a graduation, a moment where years of steadily expanding Austra’s sound has led to a monumental payoff.
Chin Up Buttercup’s lead single, “Math Equation,” uses Stelmanis’ talents as a synth producer to expound on these refreshed notions. Over a bouncy electronic rhythm reminiscent of icy ’00s Scandipop like Röyksopp and Kleerup, Stelmanis deadpans the opening line: “You said I needed my own friends/So I found them/Then you fucked them.” Chin Up Buttercup was written after a particularly harrowing pandemic-era breakup, and Stelmanis (along with co-producer Kieran Adams) illustrates this vein of hurt by matching introspection with moving chord progressions. Even more effectively, she contrasts the tragedy of her circumstance with her yearning for the dance floor. The title track, clocking in at less than two minutes, begins with a confluence of murmuring voices and another springy synth line, as Stelmanis gives herself a somewhat ineffective pep talk (“Chin up, Buttercup! It’s not that bad!”). Suddenly, the beat drops, and a seismic bass shudders to the forefront, laying waste to the song’s purposefully timid ambiance. While brief, it’s a big swing that shows how far Austra is willing to push the structure of their songs—and has the desired effect of obliterating the sadness, if even just for a moment.
“Fallen Cloud,” a mid-album banger, mimics the brain-tingling jubilation of when the MDMA hits right in the nick of time, stretching a disco progression of synths and falsetto harmonies to the ceiling. “We could be absolutely perfect/If you would just change/Only a little bit,” Stelmanis sings over a soaring beat that is so enticing, it makes her request seem kind of reasonable. The album’s most maximalist moment, however, arrives halfway through its longest track, “The Hopefulness of Dawn”; starting with a very Austra-esque sequence of reverb-laden, misty vocals, it gives way to a full-on Ibiza-ready EDM sequence. The turn could almost feel ironic if Stelmanis hadn’t just spent the entire record dropping sonic breadcrumbs leading up to this moment. Hope can be one of life’s most fleeting states of being, and “The Hopefulness of Dawn” uses the language of club music to capture it, tying up Chin Up Buttercup’s narrative with the sonic equivalent of watching daybreak over throngs of sweaty beach ravers.
Chin Up Buttercup is certainly an evolutionary leap for Austra, but it’s not a total departure. Tracks like the upbeat “Siren Song” and gossamer “Blindsided” sit perfectly alongside some of the project’s previous material. But the album is proof of an artist willing to challenge herself to stay relevant in a dance music landscape that is constantly evolving—spurred by heartache to spin grief into gold, then leaving it all on the dance floor.
