Chin up Buttercup

Five years elapsed between the release of Austra’s fourth album (2020’s *HiRUDiN*) and her fifth, and so on *Chin Up Buttercup*’s opening track, Katie Stelmanis conveniently provides a recap of her journey up to this point. “Amnesia” begins as a baroque piano ballad that provides a distant echo of the labyrinthine art pop she released in the late 2000s under her birth name, before a mid-song shift thrusts us into the strobe-lit electro underworld she’s created as Austra. “My heart is not the same without you in my arms,” she cries out at the chorus, setting the thematic tone for an album that provides rave-based therapy for the brokenhearted, whether she’s setting love-triangle drama to a Kylie-esque nu-disco thump on “Math Equation” or channeling her innermost desires into the equally dreamy and dramatic techno odyssey “Fallen Cloud.” But, true to its name, *Chin Up Buttercup* is also a reminder to not surrender to the sorrow, and with the breakbeat-fueled irreverence of the title track and the sassy synth-pop of “Think Twice,” Stelmanis wields her cathedral-sized voice to playfully theatrical effect like a goth Gaga.

Austra smoothes out heartbreak with Chin Up Buttercup's comforting sounds that after a while we can believe again, knowing that brokenness is not weakness.