Upsahl - Sagittarius

The problem with starting your EP with two utterly sublime pop songs is that you’ve only got yourself to blame when your other three perfectly decent - better than many! - pop songs don’t quite reach their heights. Such is the way with ‘Sagittarius’, the follow-up to Upsahl’s 2021 debut LP ‘Lady Jesus’. Opener ‘Kickflip’ with its effortlessly cool, half-rapped delivery and grinding, party-embracing chorus (“I’m feeling like I’m gonna go hard…”), and previous single ‘Into My Body’ - a self-love anthem that could sonically sit next to Charli XCX’s ‘Good Ones’ and make for a riotous pair - are flawless. ‘Antsy’, even, could join them in the top tier, with a Billie-esque vocal lilt and lyrics that hit sharper than perhaps expected (“I’d run back home except politics broke up my family/ No wonder I’m antsy”). But the hometown ode to ick ‘Skin Crawl’ and closer ‘Toast’ - they’re just, y’know, fine. Which is fine, apart from when we know Upsahl can be way better than that.