PUP’S NEW ALBUM, WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS?, OUT MAY 2ND
VIA LITTLE DIPPER / RISE RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “GET DUMBER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GET DUMBER” HERE
CO-HEADLINING TOUR DATES WITH JEFF ROSENSTOCK BEGIN IN SEPTEMBER
PRE-SAVE WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? HERE
"Over roaring guitars, echoing bass and a buzzing melody PUP powers through the pain. ... a sorrowful gut-punch" CBC Music on "Hallways"
“The Toronto band Pup has long made frenetic punk-pop with neat verse-chorus-bridge structures underlying Stefan Babcock’s raucously overwrought and fully self-aware lead vocals.” - New York Times
"PUP’s fourth album, ‘The Unraveling of PUPTheBand,’ finds the quartet completely removing any of the limits left on their music, pushing things as far as possible" - The New Yorker
“Hearts on their sleeves, the group captures the rage and frustration of human fallibility with crashing drums and infectious irreverence" - NPR Music
"all the catchy, fast-paced melodies, big singalongs, and ooh-oohs and whoa-oas that you could want in a PUP record" Exclaim!
"The new songs are boisterous, catchy, and meta while also earnestly wading through the nuances of depression in a manner often reserved for “confessional” indie rock…an instant mood-booster." - Pitchfork
“transmuting life’s frustrations into unhinged visceral joy” - Stereogum (Album of the Week)
“‘The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND’...reinforces the message that it’s okay to be yourself, no matter who you are." - Vulture
"PUP’s winning recipe is 49% snark, 51% heart" - Bandcamp (Album of the Day)
Image Credit: Nestor Chumak
Toronto punk heroes PUP— comprised of Stefan Babcock, Nestor Chumak, Zack Mykula, and Steve Sladkowski— will release their highly anticipated forthcoming album Who Will Look After The Dogs? on May 2nd via Little Dipper / Rise Records. The band have already previewed the record with “Hallways” and “Paranoid,” and today they share another ripper entitled “Get Dumber” featuring long-time buddy and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock. On the scathing “Get Dumber,” with backing vocals and unintentionally flubbed lyrics from Jeff Rosenstock, PUP is classically searing in all the best ways.
Stefan Babcock says of the song, “I wrote ‘Get Dumber’ in Jeff’s basement. I was house sitting for him while he was on tour. I recorded the first demo for it on his guitar using his mics and his computer. Maybe because the ghost of Jeff was in the room with me, I always imagined our voices on this song together, so I was very happy when he agreed to sing on it.
“We recorded the vocals together, in the same room, facing each other. What that means is, we both had to nail it at the same time because we couldn’t really cut between takes. On the first take, he forgot a line in the second verse and said “ahhhhhh, lyrics” instead. I couldn’t finish the take because I was laughing too hard. Anyway, he practiced singing the correct lyrics but then we decided those lyrics kinda sucked and he should just stick to “ahhhh lyrics” because it’s funny and the song is called Get Dumber. We nailed it on the second take.”
WATCH / SHARE “GET DUMBER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GET DUMBER” HERE
But wait, there’s more! That’s right, a full blown co-headline tour with both PUP and Jeff Rosenstock – aptly titled “PUP + JEFF ROSENSTOCK PRESENT: A CATACLYSMIC RAPTURE OF FRIENDSHIPNESS” – so we can hear songs like “Get Dumber” and more live. If you’ve been following along, this is not the first time PUP + Jeff have toured together – they did so, once, about 10 years ago. Here is some lore about how that went:
Jeff’s van broke down. Twice.
Stefan fell face first into a pile of cactuses while he was hiking with Jeff and his face and hands swelled up to gigantic proportions
The sold out Denver show got cancelled because a blizzard stranded both bands in Wyoming
Steve ate a weird gas station sandwich when they were stuck in Wyoming and ended up with food poisoning, spewing out of both ends
All of Jeff’s gear got stolen out of his broken down van
PUP cancelled the last week of shows because Stefan ruptured a vocal cord, and then PUP wrote a record called The Dream Is Over, the title being a direct reference to that tour
Don’t WORRY. Things can only go up from here…if this tour doesn’t kill them, that is. Ekko Astral will support on all US dates, and these shows go on-sale March 28 @ 10am local time- see below to find a show near you, and get your tickets at puptheband.com.
About those tickets… the bands say:
We are offering low-income tickets for this tour! There will be a limited amount of tickets for every show available for $20 at the venue box office*. We know times are shit and hope this helps some people down to the ol' gig who wouldn't otherwise be able to! And we must admit, we completely stole this idea from Los Campesinos! who have been doing it for a while and encouraging other bands to offer this as well, so thank you Los Campesinos! for the inspiration.
* Minneapolis, San Antonio, Austin and SLC venues do not have a box office. Please see band socials for alternate pickup locations.
PRE-SAVE WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? HERE
MORE ON PUP & WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS?
Who Will Look After The Dogs?, PUP’s pummeling and cathartic fifth LP, is their most immediate, no-frills, and hard-hitting full-length yet. It was made in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton over the course of three weeks, and it’s the culmination of PUP’s past decade of constant touring and their palpable, livewire chemistry. The album evokes the lightning-in-a-bottle intensity of their self-titled debut (except they are much better at their instruments now), and finds our self-deprecating frontman Stefan Babcock at his most reflective, vulnerable and prolific. Over 12 tracks, Babcock excavates his life's relationships—romantic, with his bandmates, and most ruthlessly, his relationship to himself. There’s plenty of growth, but also plenty of unpredictable mayhem in the arrangements and an acerbic bite in the writing. And while PUP historically are at one another’s throats during the album process, this time they scrapped their tedious perfectionism and rediscovered the joy of making loud music together.
“Within days of announcing our last album, coincidentally titled The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND, my life unexpectedly imploded. I wrote the lyrics for 'Hallways' while all that was going on. It was a weird fucking week," says Babcock. "The title of our new record, Who Will Look After The Dogs?, is what I wrote at the top of the page, the very first thing written for this album. I think it’s devastating, but in a ‘holy shit this is overdramatic’ kinda way. At least in context of the line that comes before it. That’s what makes it funny to us. That overblown stuff we all say in our dark moments can be hilarious once you've cooled off a bit. I don’t know if anyone else thinks it’s funny, but sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself. It's the only way out of the abyss. Trust me.”
Over the past decade, PUP have thrived on volatility. It's not really a joke when the Toronto punks release songs like “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” or put out albums called The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND. Though its four members are all best friends, creative dysfunction and interpersonal friction make their snarling and self-deprecating songs thrilling. To their shock and occasional dismay, it’s why their four albums are critically acclaimed and the crowds at their galvanizing live shows have only grown. It hasn’t gone off the rails yet but it definitely could. The possibility it could all blow up at any second is the band’s magic.
WATCH / SHARE “HALLWAYS” HERE
BUY / STREAM “HALLWAYS” HERE
Following the release of 2022’s The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND, their most adventurous and maximalist full-length, the band’s lives changed significantly. Guitarist Steve Sladkowski got married, bassist Nestor Chumak settled into being a dad, and drummer Zack Mykula moved to a new place in Toronto that allowed him to expand his home studio. As the others were making big decisions and getting their acts together, Babcock felt isolated. He had just ended a decade-long relationship and cut himself off from his bandmates. "We don't get along when we're making records, so I tend to retreat,” says Babcock. “In the past, I'd find comfort in another person, but this time I was at it alone. Being bored and lonely I just started writing music nonstop.” Where the older records took Babcock two to three years to get through 12 tracks, he wrote over 30 songs for Who Will Look After The Dogs? in a year.
While writing, Babcock had time to reflect and maybe even grow up. “So many early songs were about how I'm a complete fuck up,” he says. “While that remains true, I stopped hating myself as much as I did when I was younger and the people around me accepted me for who I am.” Where PUP’s previous LPs served as a window into six months of Babcock’s life, the songs here take a holistic view of his romantic partnerships, his friendships, and how he treated himself from his youth to now. In a way, writing this album served as a mirror to his emotional growth. It was hard, occasionally sucked, but was ultimately worth it.
Babcock began to view these songs as a chronology: the first few songs were written from the perspective of his past youthful naïveté, the middle third from frequent bouts of self-loathing, and the final few cuts from the acceptance that comes with finally getting your shit together. “There's a lot of sadness in the back half of the record, but there's a lot more hope here too,” says Babcock. “I'm just coming to peace with who I am.”
WATCH / SHARE “PARANOID” HERE
BUY / STREAM “PARANOID” HERE
When Babcock brought what he wrote to the rest of the band, they all agreed to let the songs develop as organically as possible. “We realized it should be four people in a room playing,” says Chumak. “The most important thing was trying to do the most with just us.” Historically, the band’s jam sessions are contentious affairs but here, everything fell into place for once in the most quintessential PUP way. “We straddle the line between it falling off the rails and then being totally in the pocket,” says Sladkowski. “But our four disparate personalities are what make it interesting.”
They decamped to Los Angeles to work with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Death Cab For Cutie, Mannequin Pussy). In the studio, he helped the band work through their nagging tendency to overthink things. When they’d like how a take sounded, he’d remind them that they didn’t have to try it again. He’d tell them when songs felt overwritten and to trust each other in the moment. “If we can't solve an arrangement or songwriting problem in the room between the four of us in a few minutes, then it's not really worth solving because we’d just get into a hole and lose perspective,” says Mykula. “Thanks to John, getting out of our heads made it fun.”
They recorded the entire album in three weeks—less than half the time it took to make The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND. “When I first started writing the lyrics for this record, everything felt really heavy,” says Babcock. “By the time we recorded it, even those dark songs felt light and fun. We didn't even really fight while making this record. It all just felt fucking awesome.”
Compared to the rest of their catalog, Who Will Look After The Dogs? evokes the early days of PUP – except they are much better at their instruments now, as they’re well out of their reckless twenties and have played nearly a thousand shows since then. “Because we were less precious with everything this time, it felt like we were capturing the feeling of being in a band for the first time when you finally hear everything clicking,” says Babcock. There’s even a newfound optimism and hope here. Even when things seem irrevocably fraught and you slip back into stupid old habits, being around your closest friends can get you through. Or, at the very least, they can tell you to get over yourself.
“With the band, I have such an intense, personal connection with those three guys that I don't have with anybody else in my life,” says Babcock. “Sometimes you have to really go through the shit to have that big high of creating something with your best friends that you could never do alone.”
PRE-SAVE WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? HERE
Photo Credit: Vanessa Heins // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? TRACKLIST
01 No Hope
02 Olive Garden
03 Concrete
04 Get Dumber
05 Hunger For Death
06 Needed To Hear It
07 Paranoid
08 Falling Outta Love
09 Hallways
10 Cruel
11 Best Revenge
12 Shut Up
TOUR DATES
05/07/25 - Birmingham, UK @ XOYO Birmingham*&
05/08/25 - Leeds, UK @ Project House*&
05/10/25 - Manchester, UK @ O2 Ritz*&
05/11/25 - Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 (TV Studio)*&
05/12/25 - Newcastle, UK @ Newcastle University*&
05/13/25 - Bristol, UK @ Marble Factory*&
05/15/25 - Southampton, UK @ Engine Rooms*&
05/16/25 - London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town*&
05/18/25 - Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg*
05/20/25 - Cologne, DE @ Club Volta*
05/21/25 - Hamburg, DE @ Logo*
05/22/25 - Berlin, DE @ Hole44*
05/23/25 - Munich, DE @ Strom*
05/25/25 - Paris, FR @ Bellevilloise*
05/27/25 - Madrid, ES @ Sala Mon
05/28/25 - Barcelona, ES @ Upload
05/29/25 - València, ES @ Loco Club
05/30/25 - San Sebastian, ES @ Dabadaba
8/5/25 - Auckland, NZ @ Tuning Fork
8/6/25 - Wellington, NZ @ San Fran
8/8/25 - Brisbane, QLD @ Princess Theatre
8/9/25 - Sydney, NSW @ Metro Theatre
8/10/25 - Melbourne, VIC @ Northcote Theatre
8/12/25 - Adelaide, SA @ Hindley St. Music Hall
8/14/25 - Perth, WA @ Magnet House
9/3/25 - Minneapolis, MN @ Palace Theatre ^
9/4/25 - Madison, WI @ The Sylvee ^
9/5/25 - Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed^
9/6/25 - Detroit, MI @ Russell Industrial Center ^
9/8/25 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE ^
9/9/25 - Columbus, OH @ KEMBA Live! ^
9/10/25 - Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre ^
9/12/25 - Washington, DC @ The Anthem ^
9/13/25 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount ^
9/15/25 - Boston, MA @ Roadrunner ^
9/17/25 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia ^
9/19/25 - Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz ^
9/20/25 - Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte ^
9/22/25 - Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern ^
9/24/25 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall ^
9/25/25 - Dallas, TX @ House of Blues Dallas ^
9/26/25 - San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger ^
9/27/25 - Austin, TX @ Radio East ^
9/30/25 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren ^
10/1/25 - San Diego, CA @ The Sound ^
10/2/25 - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium ^
10/4/25 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater ^
10/6/25 - Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom ^
10/7/25 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo ^
10/9/25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Rockwell at The Complex ^
10/11/25 - Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom ^
* support from Illuminati Hotties
& support from Goo
^ support from Ekko Astral
