Austra - CHIN UP BUTTERCUP - CD

Austra - CHIN UP BUTTERCUP - CD

Katie Stelmanis has always treated her voice like a precious instrument—classically trained, steeped in opera, and carried across four albums by a drama that can be played so convincingly on stage when it fails to appear in real life. Until, in the spring of 2020, the curtain simply dropped without warning: her partner of many years woke up one morning, said she was unhappy, and vanished like a character walking out of a production halfway through the third act. Left behind was Stelmanis, surrounded by a world that suddenly had as little structure as a misplaced chord.

The title of the new album, Chin Up Buttercup, is a subtle jab at society’s expectations: that unspoken command to patch up the heart, plaster on a smile, and just keep dancing.
Together with co-producer Kieran Adams, Stelmanis looks to Europe, to 1998, to Madonna’s Ray of Light and William Orbit’s shimmering electronic textures. From the wreckage of personal loss, she builds danceable anthems that both uplift and weigh heavy.

“Math Equation” is the first single and the beating heart of the album: an equation of betrayal and wit, where lines like “You said I needed my own friends / So I found them / Then you fucked them” serve as lament, defiance, and poetic slap all at once. Hovering over it all is a touch of sapphic chaos that makes Austra a master storyteller of the broken rhythm.

Tracklist
1. Amnesia
2. Math Equation
3. Siren Song
4. Chin Up Buttercup
5. Fallen Cloud
6. Blindsided
7. Think Twice
8. Look Me in the Eye
9. The Hopefulness of Dawn
10. Good Riddance