I still consider it a stroke of luck that Spotify recommended me New York City based band The Girls Upstairs. Landing somewhere between shoegaze and dream pop, the trio-turned-duo have had me hooked since I first heard their single “Jane” more than a year ago. Though sporadic with their releases, each track they offer to their small but vibrant fanbase is perfect for a coming-of-age movie soundtrack. Steeped in the kind of suave yearning that A24 would masterfully capture, this band is easy to fall in love with. The members met while in college, and their love for making music is what propelled them to form a band. Even though The Girls Upstairs is more of a side project than main hustle, guitarist Audrey Neri was still eager to give me an inside look at what makes this hidden gem so special.  

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Despite having recently parted ways with their lead singer, The Girls Upstairs are far from over. Two founding members remain, now faced with the opportunity to match the music to the vocals rather than the inverse. This change isn’t as earth-shattering as one might originally think, considering that the band has featured fresh members each time they’ve played live. “Being able to work with so many people, it’s been so rewarding and interesting. In this next phase [where] we’re looking to work with a bunch of different vocalists, I think it just opens the door creatively to a lot of things that we could have never imagined,” Neri says. There’s no shortage of singers or musicians in NYC, but finding the right match for the band occasionally proves difficult. Neri admits that their current lineup formed because of luck. She explains that “it’s hard at times to establish relationships with people at first, but it’s so much fun. Our keyboardist Lou [Miller] and I met at an internship seven years ago, and our boss became our bassist in the band. It’s been [a strange] mixture of people we’ve met through jobs, people we met in school, [or] friends of friends.” Though not everyone stays with the group long-term, having a steady rotation does help keep things fresh. The songwriting process is going to involve all these faces too, which open The Girls Upstairs up to a variety of new perspectives. Some of these ideas stem from the place they call home. Neri explains, “New York is always full of things that are happening, and we love going to shows, going to bars, and seeing movies. We take a lot of inspiration from the people who live here.” When those same people start to populate the band, one can anticipate a positive feedback loop of creativity, in a sense.

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While the former vocalist would write the melodies and lyrics for The Girls Upstairs, Neri would focus on the instrumentals. Without this key player, writing music is going to take a different shape. “It’s a cool opportunity now where I feel like I have a lot of options of where to go next. It’s been interesting to explore songwriting without having a vocalist in mind. It’s [a] challenge that I think breeds a new form of creativity that I hadn't really had before [when] writing around a singer. Now, as an instrumentalist, there’s a lot more freedom with the music,” Neri says. While some fans will have grown accustomed to the previous style, these changes will overall enable new music to be made. The band reassured me that their sound and aesthetics will stay the same, even if their musical horizons do broaden. The Girls Upstairs is set to morph into more of a collective entity. While this collaboration is rewarding and inspiring for Neri, I’m sure fans are equally excited to get their hands on some new tunes. 

Unfortunately, I can’t say that I got into this band via some niche track. The aforementioned “Jane” has amassed 48,000 streams on Spotify as of writing this, followed by “Wash” with 33,000. In a phenomenon that’s not uncommon these days, The Girls Upstairs found success very suddenly thanks to the internet. On the experience of their music blowing up, Neri says “it was definitely weird. We didn’t really expect much to come of it.” The band, which exists as a passion project alongside the members’ everyday jobs and commitments, hasn’t ever been the full focus of their collective energies. She explains that “we haven’t even reached the full potential of effort from our end, and I think it’ll be interesting to see in the future, when we have more time or money to feed into it, how it grows.” Even without its members’ complete focus, The Girls Upstairs continue to flourish. While they’re open to pursuing music full time if the opportunity ever were to arise, there’s some hesitation around being forced to play the music industry’s games. Despite some steps in the right direction, there’s still an inherent struggle that comes along with being in an all-female band. The often “cultish and cliquey” aspects of New York City’s music scene doesn’t necessarily help, either. “I thought that maybe things would have changed more than they had by now, but you’re still not taken as seriously as your male counterparts. In terms of opportunities, like producers wanting to work with you, there’s still this unspoken veil of people being like, ‘Oh, okay, they’re just a girl group. They can’t produce on their own,’ or, ‘They don’t know how to set up for the gig,’ or, ‘They don’t understand how to do a mix,’” Neri admits. Still, both her and the rest of the band refuse to be stopped by these unfortunate barriers. They continue to thrive as a group and create safe spaces for women to enjoy music with every show they play.

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The Girls Upstairs also aren’t afraid to do things on their own. Recording each of the four singles they’ve released has been “really DIY,” according to Neri. “It’s been entirely written, recorded and produced on our own at home. It’s been a learning experience, but it’s been challenging and rewarding to do everything, especially as girls.” Though she’s uncertain if things will continue down the same path with the impending lineup change, she’s still glad that this is how they chose to do things. “I think it’ll be fun to work with new people and record outside of our apartments, but we’ll see,” she adds. While the band is still on a break until the end of the summer, there are aspirations to record a larger body of work in the near future. “We were working on an EP in the spring, and we have a lot of unreleased demos. It’s definitely going to come at some point,” Neri says. Tentatively, fans can keep an eye out for music towards the end of the year.

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The Girls Upstairs epitomize the shift from the bedroom pop to apartment indie, effortlessly capturing what it’s like to find yourself all grown up in a big city. Even with their circumstances being a bit up in the air, the band still has an undeniably strong foundation to work with. Neri and her ensemble can build upon that in a multitude of directions, and it will be fascinating to see how these changes will translate into their music. 

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