Upchuck singer Kaila Thompson on anger, activism and staying sane through punk

Atlanta punk band Upchuck will be playing its first show in Pittsburgh next week, and being embraced by an audience helps to preserve the band’s sanity in trying times.

Upchuck’s new album “I’m Nice Now,” which came out Oct. 3 on Domino Records, defiantly tackles systemic oppression and the divisive political climate in America.

So what was making singer Kaila Thompson, who also goes by KT, angry when we talked, and how does she move past that anger to be “nice”?

“Literally everything. From being able to watch a genocide in real time live on my phone to someone who just did some weird micro-aggressive (stuff) to me, there’s a lot within that realm. It’s more so just surrounding myself — I kind of put myself in a bubble in a way, of people — with like minds and even playing these shows and looking and seeing and talking with everyone, it’s like, oh, damn, I really am preaching to the choir,” Thompson said with a laugh. “We’re all like-minded. The world isn’t so bad because there’s people like this that exist.

“It’s not all (crap), just having a little reminder of, yeah, it’s not all so (bad).”

Upchuck — comprised of KT, drummer Chris Salado, bassist Ausar Ward and guitarists Mikey Durham and Hoff — will headline Bottlerocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood on Oct. 17, with locals Glass Caps and Dogmeat opening. The tour started Oct. 1 and runs through Oct. 22 in North Carolina, with several weeks of European shows in November.

“It’s been really sick, really good turnouts,” Thompson said, “more than I was expecting.”

Their politics aren’t just hypothetical — Salado’s Little Mexico neighborhood in Atlanta was raided by ICE the day after the band filmed their video for “Plastic” there.

“It’s just more surreal — and it’s not surreal — because it just literally hit too close to home,” Thompson said.

In a Tuesday call on the road to Portland, Oregon, Thompson spoke with TribLive about the new album, the song “Forgotten Token” and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

There’s been a lot of acclaim for your live show, so how would you describe a typical Upchuck show?

I’d say lively. Just expect to get something out, release something, I guess, for the most part.

The new album, “I’m Nice Now,” just came out last Friday, so were there any messages or statements that you were trying to send with the album title?

Yeah, in this (messed up) world that we’re living in, preserving our sanity and our (expletive) happiness, like some sense of joy, because it’s so easy to be broken down with everything that’s going down. That was the whole point for, ‘Nah, you know what, I’m nice now.’ I’m not gonna be broken. I’m not gonna be reactive to everything that would literally put me in psychosis. But I guess that’s a little gist of it.

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If you didn’t have the band, how would you be able to vent or how would you be able to process these thoughts, these emotions, these frustrations?

I guess I’d probably literally do the exact same thing of being around (people) because even when we’re not going or anything, I’m still in that bubble to some extent of like minds and loved ones and probably trying to speak up, to speak out and do my best to express those messages someway somehow.

With the new album, where do you see the evolution in the band from this one to previous releases?

There’s no order in the way that we do anything. So that’s why it’s so hard to explain a lot of things when it comes to like, how did you guys end up doing this instead of that? I don’t know, man. We just be writing songs. (laughs) And even in the recording and everything, we had 10 days, back to back to back to back. So it’s just like there’s an overall force, there’s an energy that we have, and we just go off of that. And it turns out to be what we create at the time, which is kind of crazy.

You did this all in 10 days. Is that normal, is that longer, less time than normal?

I wish I could remember how long it took for us to do the last one, but 10 days is pretty quick. I think we had a little bit more time than last time, but it’s just back to back to back.

I wanted to ask about the song “Forgotten Token.” Is there a story behind that one?

My sister had passed while we were writing the album, before we recorded and everything. And it hit heavy for me. She was very talented. She’s done a lot artistically for the company that she was working for. To have passed under very weird circumstances and just know that there wasn’t anyone there from her job that she was literally working for for like 15 years, none of them were there, even at her funeral. And it’s just like, damn, like y’all really don’t give a (expletive). I don’t know, she would always tell me about them not giving her enough attention and respect and et cetera, et cetera. But she still had hopes of like, ‘No, they’re gonna respect me one of these days. I just need to do more and be more.’ And I’m like, I don’t know. It’s just kind of an ode to that.

Chris took some lead vocals on some of the songs. Since you normally handle it, how do you think he did, and is that fun to watch him take over and sing like that?

For sure. We’re a team, we’re a gang. I think even from the first time when he was doing the song, he had just hopped in, we pushed him in the studio, like, hey bro, because I couldn’t write to it. I couldn’t, I was like, bro, I can’t, I’m dead again. And we just threw him in there and just started (messing) around and we were like, damn, actually this is sick. We should probably keep doing this. It’s also sick to even get that little break and be a part of the crowd as well and trade places.