How San Francisco’s Underscores Ascended to Portola and Charli xcx’s Tour
If you grew up in San Francisco and are attuned to recent developments in left-field pop music, you might’ve done a double take when looking at the cover of rising artist Underscores’ third album, U.
Yes, it’s an illustration of Stonestown Galleria, the mall deep in southwestern San Francisco that 26-year-old Underscores mastermind April Harper Grey visited as a kid, along with untold millions of past and present San Franciscans. Born and raised just a short jaunt from the mall, Grey commissioned Japanese artist Ochiai Shohei to draw Stonestown as an organic wonderland, a vast cavern of crystal arches and hidden pathways. Signs for real-life businesses are blurred into incomprehensible symbols, stripping the mall of its commercial purpose and treating it purely as a work of awe-inspiring architecture, the kind of space that might feel a little numinous when you’re a kid.
It’s a rare regional perspective in hyperpop, a genre whose home is clearly the internet, and which emerged at the end of last decade as a catch-all term for various strains of pop influenced by electronic dance music and intent on cranking the production to cartoonish extremes.
Underscores just joined Charli xcx, arguably the most prominent figure in this scene, as an opener on the tour for her new album Music, Fashion, Film. It’s easy to see why Grey would be a good fit for Charli; both artists write pop songs and render the sonics underneath them in eye-popping detail, and Grey’s roots as a dubstep producer during the 2010s dance-music boom clearly had an influence on the supple and undulating beats beneath her bubblegum melodies.
As Underscores emerges from cult fandom into the arena universe, Grey has been shouting out her hometown to bigger and bigger audiences, not least during the emotional video tribute to Stonestown that sometimes screens as she sings her U song “Wish U Well.” Anyone who has a cherished space from their childhood still lingering in their aesthetic consciousness can appreciate Grey’s attachment to the mall, through whose deserted halls she danced during a livestream concurrent with the release of the record in March.
KQED talked to Grey about the role of place in her work ahead of her upcoming performance at San Francisco’s Portola Music Festival on Sept. 27.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Daniel Bromfield: You were born and raised in San Francisco. Tell me about how growing up here influenced your work.
Underscores: This is my third album. The previous two albums have had some sort of geographical location to tether it. The first one [2021’s Fishmonger] was in New Jersey, the second one [2023’s Wallsocket] was in Michigan. As the idea of tethering an album to a location became something I was more interested in pursuing with further work, the more obvious it became that I would have to do something in San Francisco, where I was born and raised.
I grew up in Miraloma Park. Stonestown is a 35-minute walk from where I was. I had this ritual in high school and during COVID where I would listen to this one album and try to follow the exact same route and get to the mall once the album was done. I kind of liked the idea of replacing that album, almost, and seeing if I could soundtrack the way from my house to the mall.
Which album was it?
It was this K-pop album called Melting by the band Mamamoo. I did that walk once when I was 16 and everything synced up really well. I just got the urge that I should repeat this. During COVID, when I was really going through it, it helped calm me down and ground me to do that walk. My album is around the same length, which was sort of the intention, making a record you could listen to on a short walk or in transit somewhere in the city.
K-pop has been a major influence on your work. You had a YouTube channel, 2ndgenbias, analyzing K-pop songs, and your use of light sticks on your recent tour was also inspired by K-pop concerts. What have you learned from K-pop?
There’s a lot of care put into the visuals in K-pop. That’s not to say that’s not the case here, but there’s a sort of hierarchy where music is priority number one, and stuff like music videos falls to the side a little bit in the West sometimes. I love the idea of the light stick as a token of someone’s adoration for an artist. I’ve always wanted to do a light stick based on the emblem of my first album, which is this water tower in New Jersey. I thought it made a lot of sense as a light stick. It was a pretty big financial risk for me to take, and it really ended up paying off seeing all these light sticks in the crowd.
You recently joined Charli xcx on her Music, Fashion, Film tour. How is preparing for a tour of that scale different from preparing for something like your Galleria tour, which took place in smaller venues like the Regency Ballroom?
It’s been interesting. Their team has been really accommodating and helpful, and this is obviously something I wasn’t expecting to do anytime soon. I do think it’ll be a version of the show we put on for the Galleria tour, but with different architecture and trying to pay a lot more attention to my presence. Opening for people can be nerve-wracking and feel humiliating when you don’t get the crowd to do what you want them to do, but I’m trying to find ways to occupy that space and be a little more confident.
One of the things that struck me at your Regency Ballroom show in June was your physical presence. How do you manage performing at that level of intensity night after night?
I do my stretches. I was doing yoga on tour a lot, like every day. My movement for that tour was so sporadic and flaily, and I was constantly in motion. Sometimes it can be more confident to know when to not move at all, and that’s what I’m trying to work on, conserving my energy and putting it towards singing and hitting the right notes. But I have a great time on stage. I have this ring that tracks my steps, and I’m very passionate about getting my steps.
Your work has a strong sense of place, which isn’t something I think most people would associate with pop music. What is the role of specific places in your music?
I think tethering an album to a real-world place helps sell the inspiration to other people a little easier. It’s hard to get across, whether it’s to the audience or even someone who’s helping me with music videos or visuals. Having real-world examples of what something looks like is important.
I’m not much of an architecture nerd, but I do get inspired by certain kinds of architecture. The first thing I think about when I start a new project is what spaces I would listen to this music in, where it would feel the most at home. My first album was more of a seaside nautical town sort of thing, the second one was Midwest suburbia, and this one is obviously big cities — skyscrapers, hotels, airports, all these very modern and contemporary forms of architecture.
Tell me about the cover design for U.
I’ve been a fan of Ochiai Shohei since the last record. At the time I didn’t have a lot of money to work with, and it didn’t really fit with the general aesthetic of Wallsocket, but with this album, I knew this was the time to see if I can push to work with him. I love his style because it’s so waggly, there’s no straight lines at any point. It feels almost like a childlike interpretation of trying to draw a memory from scratch. I felt his art style would perfectly complement the vibe I was going for and hopefully get across how I feel about spaces like these when I’m really passionate.
I’ll have a lot of dreams where there’s a lot of connecting architecture that makes no sense. Malls connected to supermarkets connected to churches or something. I think I wanted to show a space that’s really commercial and consumerist in this almost dreamlike, romantic way, and he’s the perfect artist for that.
Tell me about how your livestream at Stonestown for the album release came to be.
It was my first time livestreaming anything in real life, not just tied to a desk. We just reached out to the mall and they were down to let me traipse around the mall for a couple hours after closing, which works perfectly because with a midnight release in the States, that’s 9 p.m. Pacific. I had the idea of doing this stream around the mall where I just kind of dance and move around and then have these little awkward moments or happy accidents happen. The camera rig came loose towards the last couple songs.
A few kids from SF State came to meet us right after. They had seen we were streaming in Stonestown at the time. I haven’t had anything like that happen before. I’m very grateful that Stonestown was down to let us do that. I think it was a really cool artifact to have.
Underscores performs at Portola Music Festival at Pier 80 in San Francisco on Sept. 27.