[Cover photo credit to Alex Brown]
New York City-based Indie Rock band The Upsides have revealed “New Jersey in the 90s”, taken from their upcoming second album, In The Maze, due October 16, 2026, via Dream Wolf Records.
Mixed by Austin Asvanonda (Sam Fender, The War on Drugs) with additional production from Nick Perri, the track “looks back on childhood, memory and the loss of innocence through a deeply personal story rooted in the band’s New Jersey upbringing.”
The Upsides, made up of brothers Matt and Dan Fullam, alongside longtime friends Hart Mechlin, Pat Freeman and Matt DaSilva, have spent years shaping their sound through friendship, collaboration and experimentation.
Lyrically, “New Jersey in the 90s” reflects on the early 2000s through the memories of Matt and Dan, particularly the family who lived next door and lost their father on 9/11. The family eventually moved away, but their absence and the tragedy surrounding it remained part of the brothers’ understanding of their childhood.
Of the new single, Matt Fullam explains:
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. 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.
People have always talked about the amber years of a bygone era, and how everything used to be better in those days, but I really think that’s just a mourning of the blissful days of your youth… and in the tri-state area, those of us who were born in the 90s just happened to have one day that served as a death of innocence to that youth.
Much of the upcoming album came together during a ten-day songwriting retreat in Parksville, New York, just one month after the release of The Upsides’ self-titled debut. Matt, Dan, and Hart spent the retreat experimenting with new sounds before the band eventually recorded at The Building, a converted rural church in Marlboro, New York.
