GENRE; Electronic/ Rock

LABEL; Domino

REVIEWED; 18 November, 2025

RATING; 7.5

Katie Stelmanis has always balanced the operatic and the ecstatic, and on Chin Up Buttercup she turns heartbreak into nightclub therapy: an album that insists sorrow can somewhat messily be danced through. The record was released November 14, 2025 on Domino and channels a sharper, more immediate pop sensibility than some of Austra’s earlier, more austere work. 

From the hook-first sting of lead single “Math Equation” to the widescreen swoon of “Fallen Cloud,” Stelmanis leans into shimmering Eurodance and breakbeat propulsion while keeping the lyricism intimate and cutting. The songs are built around buoyant synth lines and seismic bass that undercut confessional, often wry observations about betrayal and recovery. 

Co-produced with Kieran Adams, the album wears its Madonna/Ray of Light influences proudly but never as mimicry. Instead, those references become scaffolding for Austra’s signature theatricality: multi-tracked vocals that bloom into choirs, sudden structural shifts that let an interlude feel like a pent-up exhale, and production choices that trade subtlety for catharsis when the emotion demands it. 

What makes Chin Up Buttercup work is the tension it sustains between pep-talk irony (the title itself) and genuine emotional fallout. Tracks like “Blindsided” and the closer “Good Riddance” move the listener from brittle anger to something resembling acceptance, often within the space of a four-minute pop song. Critics have noted this album as one of Austra’s most direct and dance-forward statements to date, and that feels right: grief here is insistently communal, best exorcised under a strobe. 

If you know Austra for dramatic atmospheres, expect the familiar voice and scope but also a new willingness to let the beat carry the weight;  a bittersweet, high-energy pivot that turns private collapse into a public, almost celebratory rite.