Upsahl

King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
Glasgow, 20/11/22

Last night I witness’d the rebirth of a dungaree-clad, amazing looking, sandpaper-glam Venus, rising gloriously from her oyster shell singing all manner of bangin’ tunes. It was Upsahl’s first ever day in Scotland on her ‘This Is My First Headline Tour’ tour, & I was swiftly moulded into groove-crunching appreciation by the drama play’d out before me. She is a cut above, like, & supported by just a drummer & a guitarist – gutsy groove machines in their own right – & sometimes picking up a bass or a guitar herself, the comblended sound is that of an epic flight of eagles.

Each delicious fruit from her song carousel is carv’d from the magma of a very poetical mind, which has then cool’d into the miasmic memories of everyone in last night’s audience. It was a massive sing-a-long, & as I popp’d my Upsahl cherry I began mouthing some of the words myself here & there, so sorcery-like is her chaunt.

It’s very simple – it’s you, it’s us, & we’re going the fuck off
Upsahl

Sometimes delicate, sometimes dropping gardy loos on us ‘eds, she’s got very trick in the book up her sleeve, & a few I’ve never seen before, to keep us all enthrall’d on her tigervibes. I’ll be honest, I’d seen a couple of over-produc’d videos, & they came across a little twee, & the songs were nothing amazing I thought at first – but her live performance, woah, that is some arcane ethereality that, it’s like taking ketamine at Valhalla with the top dog Valkyrie or summat, her performance is so powerful. If this is her headline tour, she has definitely found her niche, perhaps even her true sound, as I’m sure the live versions were different, edgier, more important.

The crowd was about eighty percent female, & while we’re on numbers I’d say her set is already seventy percent classics, & a couple more albums to fill in the gaps & she’s gonna be massive. There are some genius bolts of brilliance in there, damn straight. I’ve embedded my faves from the night in the review, & as we were boinging along I was asking their names off this sound barmaid from Airdrie to my right who knew every syllable of every song, like. I’m like, ‘she’s really good int she,’ & she just smil’d at me back with a warm & wonderful welcome to the familyness.

She’s just got that thing, she’s just got it
Teri Welsh

The love Upsahl was feeling from the room, well this Glasgow room at least, should be enough to propel our bardic beauty to some proper dizzy heights. Its like we all wanted her to be brilliant, because she is. I also noticed the way the lassies, as they sang along, would sometimes tighten their nostril muscles, & energetically squidge them into their faces as they mimick’d certain clearly fibre-grinding lines.

That was one cheeky fuckin’ vixen rave, that – well I certainly l enjoy’d myself, & the encore confirm’d her stunning stars ascendency, coming back on stage with a ‘Scotland, we aint fuckin’ done yet, every fucking one of you channel whatever energy you have left & find you inner lunatic,’ leading very elegantly to her last track…