Upchuck - I'm Nice Now

Indie-exclusive silver vinyl pressing + poster, download card

Review via AllMusic by Tim Sendra:

Atlanta hardcore punks Upchuck had already made two excellent albums full of buzzsaw guitars, pummeling rhythms, and fire-starting vocals before they hit the studio with producer Ty Segall to record their third, and first for Domino. Segall had already worked with them, helping to hone their sound to a fine point and capturing all the wild intensity of their live shows. The combo of the live-to-tape recording and the band's vigorous performances helps I'm Nice Now to hit even harder than their previous efforts, and the increased variety in the songwriting helps give it a boost up and over the hardcore wall to land firmly in top-notch rock & roll of any stripe territory. While the record is stuffed with paint-peeling rockers like "Plastic" and "Kin," where vocalist KT battles the rampaging band to a bloody draw, there are songs that show the group stretching in interesting ways. Drummer Chris Salgado contributes the occasional hoarsely shouted verses in Spanish, they slow the tempo to a deep-fried Sabbath-y crawl ("Kept Inside"), strip things down musically and tonally ("New Case"), and even throw in a couple of songs with hummable melodies (the grungy "Forgotten Token" and "Slow Down"). All these diversions don't detract from the power of the punkier tracks; instead, they give the album the third dimension that Upchuck's earlier records were sometimes missing. It helps that the band sound super convincing when they churn out slower songs or when they dial down the noise and get a little poppy, and KT has a voice capable of sounding perfect shouting out boiling-hot invective or crooning with a little bit of melancholy and regret. The group sound like they could keep playing hardcore forever and never get boring, or they could shift to post-punk or dance-punk or even cumbia and still be exciting and vital. Their combination of on-point messaging, unyielding intensity, and wall-rattling musical power guarantees their future even as I'm Nice Now goes a long way to positioning them as the most important band of right now.