Upchuck Are Coming To Australia
Born out of Atlanta’s DIY hardcore scene, Upchuck are a band who are true to themselves, where they come from and have no desire to fit into any box.
Listening to their recent album, I’m Nice Now – released late last year on Domino Records – the above is highlighted, you hear them casually flip between genres, styles and even languages. The only constant within the album's thirteen-song tracklist is that it’s all Upchuck, and each song is exactly what feels right for them.
I called the band’s lead vocalist, Kalia “KT” Thompson, while she was cooped up with a hot chocolate in a freezing cold storeroom of the poorly insulated old music venue where she works, ahead of the band’s debut Australian tour.
I wanted to start by asking about Atlanta’s scene. In the past, you’ve spoken about the importance of the city’s DIY venues, the impact they had on you guys and the community. What is the scene like?
Right now?
Both now and when you guys were coming up.
I feel like the DIY scene is dead now. At the time, it was going wild; there was Mammal, which was a place where we were practising late at night and had crazy ass scenarios happen. South Bend Commons still exists, which is a cool spot. During the time before they gentrified the fuck out of everything, you could find music of all genres; the community was crazy diverse and unified. We were all promoting and supporting each other.
I think it was a cultural shift at that point, too, as far as who you were seeing and the DIY hardcore scene. Before, I felt like I would go to shows when I was first coming to Atlanta, and it would be a bunch of thirty-year-old white men, on some classic hardcore shit. But as I started to come up more and more often, it started to change. There was this band called trashcan who were an all-black band, seeing them and the crowd they brought out, it was just like, ‘Oh shit, this is Atlanta.’ There was so much shit going on that it was hard to consume it all, let alone talk about it all now. I have to pull out the photo album and look at the pictures from that era to even remember everything. It was kind of a renaissance.
Yeah, did it feel like the scenes were split by genre until that point?
I don’t think it was split by choice, but I think people naturally gravitated to where they felt comfortable being. It slowly started turning into a situation where people felt more comfortable going to things they weren’t normally comfortable doing before. That was a period of meeting a bunch of different people who were doing a bunch of different things and were in a bunch of different bands.
Did seeing that help you guys come together?
Yeah, that’s how we got together to begin with. I didn’t know them before. I knew Hoff because we went to school together, but I didn’t know he was in the band. I was just working with the bassist at the time, and he said they were looking for a vocalist. I came over, and when I saw Hoff there, I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ [laughs]. Then once I met them, I started seeing them more often. It was the thing that once you meet someone, you catch them everywhere.
A big thing that stands out to me about Upchuck is Chris’s Spanish vocals. How did that idea come up?
One day, we were recording, and Mikey was like, ‘Chris, get into the booth,’ and he was sort of confused, like: What do you want me to do? Mikey just said, ‘Talk shit.’ That’s what he did, and that was it.
It’s such a nice touch. Especially having you do backing vocals for him in English and him doing them for you in Spanish.
Hell yeah, we got more of that coming, that’s for sure.
I wanted to ask about the Faye Webster tour, because those mixed-genre tours are always so interesting. My friends, dust, opened for Sombr recently, and that was such a wild experience; we were all like, this is crazy. I’m sure it was similar for you guys, being so different from who the audience is there for. What was it like playing a show to Faye’s crowd?
[Laughs] We literally called it the Barbenhiemer tour. The first time we toured with her, I literally saw little girls covering their ears during our soundcheck. They’d come in early, get front row, one of us would strum our guitars, and you’d watch the happiness and life come out of their whole fucking soul. Later, they’d open up to it and be like, I’m ready for this. They were definitely a bit mad at the start, finding out it was our asses opening.
[Laughs] It’s crazy because you could literally change someone’s life playing that show.
No, exactly, that was another thing. After the show, I’d go to the merch table, and kids would come up to me and be like, ‘I’ve never moshed before, and I never thought I’d mosh at the Faye Webster show. But I’m glad I did, thank y’all.’ I was like fuck yeah. It was cool.
That’s so cool. How did the idea of touring together come up?
Faye is our friend from Atlanta. She’d sometimes come and play bass during our sets. We were kicking it one day, and we were like, it would be kinda crazy if we went on tour together. Then it ended up becoming a reality.
You guys are a punk band, but how do you feel playing those slower songs? Do you feel like there’s more you can do with them?
I fuck with those songs heavy, sometimes I need to chill; we all need to chill, you can’t be raging the whole time. I look into the crowd and see relief when we get to that part of our set where it’s the slower melodic songs.
For sure, it’s nice not being put into a box, too, where it’s like you are expected to exclusively make punk music, but you can do whatever you want.
For sure. No one’s really in a box unless you want to be; it always surprises me when people feel forced into a box. If someone expected me to be aggy all the damn time and wanted every Upchuck song to sound the exact same, it’s like, nah, that’s not us.
Are you excited to come to Australia?
Yes! I have not met one Australian I don’t fuck with!
Tour Dates:
Brisbane
Wednesday 4 March, 2026
The Brightside
Special guest: Blue Diner
Sydney
Friday 6 March, 2026
The Lansdowne Hotel
Special guests: Xiao Xiao plus “Secret Guests”
Melbourne
Wednesday 11 March, 2026
The Tote
Special guest: CLAMM
Auckland
Friday 13 March, 2026
Double Whammy
Special guest: DARTZ
Wellington
Saturday 14 March, 2026
San Fran
Special guest: DARTZ