Today, Austra, the pop project of Canadian vocalist and composer Katie Stelmanis, has announced the news of her new album, Chin Up Buttercup, which is due out on November 14, through Domino. The album’s name is reference to the societal pressure to just paste on a smile and keep going. Stelmanis and co-producer Kieran Adams took inspiration from the Eurodance sound of Madonna’s landmark 1998 album, Ray of Light, that is produced by William Orbit and emerged with a mix of hypnotic dance floor anthems and elegant melodies to soothe your broken heart.
On the upcoming project, the artist unleashes her pain over the breakup into poetic fragments in a cathartic Google document that eventually became the source for the album’s powerful lyrics. One such example is captured vividly in the album’s first riveting single, “Math Equation”: “You said I needed my own friends / So I found them / Then you fucked them.” There is an unmistakable type of sapphic chaos threaded through every song, and “Math Equation” is equal parts catchy clapback and bittersweet plea for reconnection.
Heartbreak is both an ordinary humiliation and uniquely devastating. Stelmanis describes Chin Up Buttercup as narrative about “the alienating feeling of being heartbroken in a world that’s awkward and inconvenienced by your pain.” Most of us act as though romantic grief is more of an embarrassment than a universal wound. Stelmanis decided to lean into the character of the psycho creep, consumed by longing instead of aspiring toward detachment.
Chin Up Buttercup Track List
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
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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