After recently releasing 'Get Dumber" Feat. Jeff Rosenstock, the third advance single from their new record, Who Will Look After The Dogs?, Toronto punk heroes PUP - comprised of Stefan Babcock, Nestor Chumak, Zack Mykula, and Steve Sladkowski - are announcing Mega-City Madness. The six night ‘tour’ begins with a house show and continues on through landmark venues across their hometown of Toronto beginning July 13. Each evening will feature a different artist on the bill with appearances from NOBRO, Solids, Cadence Weapon, Bad Waitress, Jeff Rosenstock, and more.
“We are incredibly proud to be from Toronto,” says Babcock. “We grew up playing these venues. We started this band in friends' basements and over the past decade have grown slowly and steadily until we were lucky enough to be playing big concert halls. This ‘tour’ is a celebration of that journey, going back to the smallest, greasiest shows. We're playing all these milestone venues, each one a little bigger than the last, just like we have over the past 10 years, but this time we're doing it all in one week. We're so grateful for what this city has given us. Holy fuck we love Toronto.”
Artist pre-sale tickets for the Mega-City Madness ‘tour’ are on sale April 9 at 10 am ET and general ticket sales begin April 11 at 10 am ET. Tickets can be found HERE. Full world tour dates can be found below.
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.
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.”
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.”
