NEPA band Fosh release pop-punk debut album “Up With The Sun”

by Bella Lardin

As an avid DIY music listener, I’m always on the lookout for the next big band to come from the basements of Pittsburgh and its surrounding cities. My newest obsession: Up With The Sun, the debut album of emo/pop punk/alt rock band Fosh.

At its core, Fosh (pronounced foe-sh, stylized “Fosh.”) is made up of brothers Nico, Luca, and Dante Schwartz, with their father George Schwartz, cousin Steve Martin, and friend Stone Magagna filling in on drums. The band is originally from northeast Pennsylvania, but has played a number of packed shows in Pittsburgh and quickly developed a following within the city. My first exposure to Fosh was at one of these shows in late February.

When you attend as many basement shows as I do, it can be tough for a band to stick out, especially in a city with as many active bands as ours. Fosh caught my attention immediately, opening their set with “Winter”, which remains my favorite song of theirs even after Up With The Sun‘s release. This is a band with effortlessly catchy riffs and melodies, emotional lyricism, and the kind of cohesion that can only come from knowing your bandmates your entire life. By the start of “Winter”‘s final chorus, the entire room was moshing. “Winter” was followed by a number of infectious tracks such as “The Seconds Belong To Me” and “Somewhere Tonight”, the latter of which is the opening track on Up With The Sun. Following the set, myself and several of my friends would rank Fosh among our favorite bands within Pittsburgh’s DIY scene.

Up With The Sun maintains much of the energy of the band’s live set, with 47 minutes (quite a bit for a DIY debut!) of uptempo pop-punk and emo and a few slower tracks (“Staring in the Dark”, “Sundown Streets”) sprinkled in. Even these mellower tracks have a distinct pop-punk sound, and mesh well with the powerful “Winter”, “Somewhere Tonight”, and “Up With The Sun” to create a compelling debut that will surely pique the interest of DIY music enjoyers. Just as they did at their basement show, the band grabs your attention immediately with the opening riff of “Somewhere Tonight”, an undeniably catchy opening track and a crowd favorite whenever performed live. This energy is maintained through “At the Door” – one of my favorite non-single tracks – before the album gives way to the more mellow “Flower”. Though a little more subdued in the album mix than in the band’s live performance, the lead guitar is the clear star of these tracks; Fosh pulls you in with their riffs and sets themselves apart with their melodies.

“Flower” plays directly into “Spinning in my Mind”, another upbeat track to ramp up the energy before standout track “Winter”. It’s impossible to overstate my love for this track. Released as the album’s final single back in January and performed by the band at both shows I attended, “Winter” is powerful, melodic, and for lack of a better word, big. It just may be my favorite song of 2024. I’m not sure anything will be able to live up to the live rendition (and would therefore encourage you to check out the band live!), but the studio version is still great, and I kept it on repeat well after finishing my first listen through of the album.

“Winter” is followed by the slower “Staring in the Dark”, then “Best Thing”, then “Fog”, then another of my favorite tracks, “Without You”. Fosh lists pop punk giants Green Day as an influence in their Spotify bio, and nowhere is it more obvious than this track. With a simple, poppy chord progression and a chorus anchored by the line “I can’t die without you”, the track is sure to be stuck in your head for days. It also highlights the production quality of Up With The Sun; it’s rare for me to really like the studio mixes of DIY bands because of how different it is from the live sound, but Fosh strikes a great balance here. The vocals have processing but not too much processing, the guitars are layered nicely over the drums, the riffs are at the forefront but don’t fully bury the rest of the mix. I only wish the screams of the background vocals were a little louder!

After “Without You”, we arrive at the final two tracks, which really display the versatility of the group: “Sundown Streets” and the album’s title track. The former is perhaps the only track on Up With The Sun that could be considered “slow”, the latter is a five minute showcase of the band’s strengths already demonstrated on the first ten tracks. With a similar structure to “Winter”, the band moves seamlessly through each element of the composition, concluding with the lines “Fill up the glass/Close in, make it last/’Cause I’m so tired/And I wanna forget” and one last minute of excellent, emotive guitar work.

Although there’s a few upcoming releases that could unseat it, Up With The Sun currently occupies the #1 spot on my personal album of the year list. I could keep raving about the band’s live energy and songwriting ability, but I think their Spotify bio says it best:

“Greatest band in history” – the general public

“Fosh sucks” – 0 people, ever

Convinced? Come check out Fosh at WPTS Radio’s very own School’s Out Showcase, free and open to the public. I promise you, you don’t wanna miss this band.

And listen to Up With The Sun here.