House Shows and Schlupp: Live Music Rules

Lately, I have found myself going to more and more house shows in the Urbana-Champaign music scene. As a transfer student and a junior, this semester has been the first where I’ve been able to dedicate time to seeing these shows. Whether it’s Stancyzk at the Mirror or Sweet Melk at Powder Room, it’s been a great experience getting to listen to the local talent week after week. It’s something that’s certainly unique to UIUC, at least compared to my last university. Being able to go to a show somewhere every weekend is pretty amazing, and I don’t intend to take it for granted, at least while I’m still at UIUC.

I feel like the live music scene is also a highly understated part of the UIUC party scene. Most of the attention from prospective and new students goes to the staples of college party culture—fraternities, tailgates, etc.—with live music occupying a much smaller niche in the social ecosystem. Save for the big campus-wide celebrations like Halloweekend or Unofficial, house shows are less common and usually less packed. Sometimes, it feels like the isolation is deliberate, meant to preserve a community of local music fans over big crowds. It makes for a more intimate social experience, with most of the regulars sharing a common interest in live music. This is not to say that the house show experience is any better than the experience that one might get elsewhere, but it’s certainly different, and some people (myself included) like that difference.

Photo: Decapitation at the Food Court live at the Mirror, 10/28/2023. Photo courtesy of Nina King (Instagram).

One band that has repeatedly captured my attention since I started attending these shows is Schlupp, a small indie rock/pop punk band based out of Chicago. While they’re not exactly local, their few descents from the Windy City in the past months have proved to be some of the best highlights of the shows I’ve been to. Reminiscent of the jazz-influenced rock of King Krule’s earlier records and the slacker aesthetic of Dinosaur Jr., Schlupp stands out in the scene as a highly flexible, technical, and emotionally rich band.

Headed by singer and guitarist Alex Schlupp, the band delves deep into the complexities of romance throughout their first album, In Transit, self-released under “Osowaigo” in 2022. Dying relationships, isolation, and lost love are themes brought to the forefront in this album, with Schlupp meditating on them over subtle rock- and folk-influenced instrumentation. Phased guitar tones inject the album with occasional bursts of psychedelic rock, whereas the song “Take Another Sip” provides listeners with a beautiful finger-picked and slide guitar journey, more evocative of Prine than pop-punk. Taken as a whole, it’s a diverse, genre-bending, and internal experience that just leaves me heartbroken.

Photo: Lead singer and guitarist Alex Schlupp of the band Schlupp live at the Fallen Log, 10/8/2023. Photo courtesy of Roberto Galicia (Instagram).

I feel like it goes without saying that I would love to see more from this band. They clearly have much to say, and an album that explored the external world would nicely complement the internal dialogue in In Transit. Unsurprisingly, they’re already ahead of the curve here—their single “Unsophisticated”, released this past May, unflinchingly satirizes the concept of living with others while also describing Schlupp’s growing friction with society. It’s perhaps a hint of what may be in store for the band going forward, with a focus on broader issues in the world around Schlupp and how they apply to his own life.

I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on Schlupp, and you should too. Check them out on Spotify and Apple Music if you haven’t already. And check out my radio show, ALT ASSAULT, live on pizzafm.org (this VERY website) from 10-11pm on Monday nights! We discuss the local scene pretty often, and it’s a great way to find new music.