Picked to Click 2024 No. 7: Upright Forms

If you’ve ever confused Upright Forms with a certain similarly named local band that also appears in this poll… well, just know you’re not the only one. 

“Everyone does,” guitarist and vocalist Nick Sakes says, shaking his head. “Every single person does.”

Upright Forms is the trio of veteran local musicians Sakes (Sicbay, Dazzling Killmen, Colossamite, Xaddax), bassist Noah Paster (Blaha, Zoo Animal, Askeleton, Aneuretical), and drummer Shaun Westphal (Mise En Place, and then “having a kid and not playing music for a long time”). 

Sakes and Westphal have known each other for almost 30 years. “Even when I was a kid in South Dakota we would correspond via email—fan mail, really—when he was in Colossamite,” Westphal says. During the pandemic, the two musicians, both avid cyclists, started riding bikes together, and in 2022, they started making music in Westphal’s basement. 

“I’d like to add a crucial detail,” Sakes chimes in. “I originally contacted you to talk about my 401K.” (Westphal is a financial adviser by trade.) Paster, another longtime friend of Sakes’s, randomly reached out that February when a Sicbay song shuffled on his headphones, and by May, the three were performing their first show at Caterwaul. 

It all came together “really naturally and bizarrely,” Sakes chuckles, but their myriad bands and years of friendship help explain how the post-hardcore trio arrived more or less fully-formed. It also helps explain the sturdiness and self-assuredness of Upright Forms’ debut LP Blurred Wires, a 10-track ripper released in June.

The album has evoked a number of comparisons to Shellac (Sakes and co. don’t really hear it) and Fugazi (which makes somewhat more sense to them). To my ear, it has more in common with early post-punk bands like Mission of Burma or Gang of Four.

But really, the influences are far-ranging and unspecific. “They Kept on Living” is a snarling power-pop monster story with a jubilant holler-along chorus. “Biology of Time,” the frenetic and punchy penultimate track, wouldn’t be out of place on Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency and I. The album’s title, Blurred Wires, comes from a tongue-in-cheek name they’d initially given to the roaring opening track “Heaven Knows”: It sounded kind of like Blur, mixed with Wire. 

And the wide-ranging sound could also be due to their age range. At 39, Paster is the self-described “baby of the band”; Sakes is 61. (Westphal isn’t getting off the hook here—he’s 47.) So while Sakes was booking punk shows in the ’80s, Westphal came of age during Nirvana’s heyday, and Paster was an “MTV kid” raised on Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes. 

But all three boast an efficiency that reflects their years of practice. “When we do get time to write, it happens very quickly,” Westphal says. They’re “grownups with jobs and families”—recording when they can, and practicing just once a week on Sundays, sometimes at noon, sometimes at 10. 

“It depends on when you want to watch the Vikings game,” Sakes says, gesturing to his bassist. 

“That’s true,” Paster laughs. “I’ll admit to that.”

Explore the entire Picked to Click class of 2024 below.