New York City indie rockers The Upsides have released a new music video for their song “New Jersey In The 90s”, and this one gets stuck pretty quickly. Synths sit all over the pleasant indie vibe, the vocal melody has that easy earworm pull, and underneath it there is a much more personal story about childhood, memory and a family the Fullam brothers grew up next door to in New Jersey.
The song is the fourth single from “In The Maze”, The Upsides’ second album and their first for Dream Wolf Records. “New Jersey In The 90s” comes out September 16, with the album following on October 16, 2026.
The Upsides are brothers Matt Fullam, on guitar and vocals, and Dan Fullam, on drums, alongside longtime friends Hart Mechlin on lead guitar, Pat Freeman on keys and guitar, and Matt DaSilva on bass. Years of friendship, collaboration and a few chance encounters have shaped the current five-piece, and “In The Maze” grew out of a period when they started giving themselves much more room to try things.
“New Jersey In The 90s” reaches back to Matt and Dan’s memories of the early 2000s. The family living next door to them lost their father on 9/11. They eventually moved away, but what happened stayed tied to the brothers’ memories of growing up and to the point where childhood started to look different.
“It’s less a story about that event and that particular day, and more about how difficult it is to make sense of certain things in your past while acknowledging how profound of an impact they had on you,” Matt said.
He also remembers that period as a break in the way he and Dan understood the world around them.
“Even though we were super young, looking back now there was a shift that happened, a death to the innocence of our earlier childhood, which still always seems to have an amber glow to it,” he said.
Musically, the track sits close to the hazier feel of previous single “Pretending It Fades”. It gives the synths plenty of space and carries a lighter, immediately catchy melody alongside a story that gets heavier the closer you listen. Other songs already released from “In The Maze” have shown a brasher and heavier side of the record.
The song also took quite a bit of work to get there. The band went through several versions before settling on the final one, and they were still changing things during the mix. They ended up retracking the bass at the last minute while finishing the record at One Cue Recording, The War on Drugs’ studio in Burbank, California.
Matt calls it the band’s “Drugs-iest song yet.”
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Austin Asvanonda, whose credits include Sam Fender and The War on Drugs, mixed the album in Burbank. Nick Perri, known for his work with Silvertide and Luke Spiller, handled additional production.
The story of “In The Maze” goes back to June 2024, only a month after The Upsides released their self-titled debut. Matt, Dan and Hart left New York City for a ten-day songwriting retreat in Parksville, New York. They spent the time writing, swapping instruments and messing around with sounds they had not used much before. More than half of the new album came together during those ten days.
They then spent roughly another year working through demos before leaving the city again to record the full album at The Building, a converted rural church in Marlboro, New York.
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The songs grew beyond the jangly garage-rock base of their debut. Synths became a bigger part of the arrangements, strings entered the picture, and the record also has some heavier sections. The band were already heading in that direction during the Parksville sessions, where changing instruments and trying different approaches became part of the writing itself.
Post-production wrapped in February 2026. Asvanonda then handled the mix, while Steve Fallone mastered the record. Perri contributed additional production, and Richard Jones and Laura Moody of Elysian Collective, whose credits include Florence + The Machine and Fontaines D.C., arranged the strings.
Across the 11 songs, The Upsides pull from specific things that happened to them: memories that are difficult to make sense of years later, moments when life reaches a make-or-break point, and the fact that some of those experiences never hand you a clean answer. “New Jersey In The 90s” takes one of the most personal memories on the album and puts it inside one of its catchiest songs.
The full “In The Maze” tracklist is:
“In The Maze”
“Very Bad Kids”
“Say Follow”
“Pretending It Fades”
“New Jersey In The 90s”
“Telepathic”
“Fast Angel”
“Twist Our Fate”
“Space Monkey”
“Limbo”
“Sepia”
“New Jersey In The 90s” is out September 16. “In The Maze” follows October 16, 2026 through Dream Wolf Records.
