BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Indiana/Indianapolis BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:-0400 DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:-0500 DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:d43f1712-154e-4487-8702-f4a1a9a5f78d@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20261026T183335Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Indiana/Indianapolis:20261026T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/Indiana/Indianapolis:20261026T200000 SUMMARY:PUP DESCRIPTION:Over the past decade\, PUP have thrived on volatility. It's n ot 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 P UPTHEBAND. Though its four members are all best friends\, creative dysfu nction and interpersonal friction make their snarling and self-deprecati ng songs thrilling. To their shock and occasional dismay\, it’s why thei r four albums are critically acclaimed and the crowds at their galvanizi ng live shows have only grown. It hasn’t gone off the rails yet but it d efinitely could. The possibility it could all blow up at any second is t he band’s magic. Who Will Look After The Dogs?\, PUP’s pummeling and cat hartic fifth LP\, is their most immediate\, no-frills\, and hard-hitting full-length yet. Out May 5 via Little Dipper Rise Records\, it’s the cu lmination of their past decade of constant touring and their palpable\, livewire chemistry. While it deals with dark thoughts\, it’s not whiny. It’s actually the most hopeful of their catalog\, finding frontman Stefa n Babcock at his most reflective and vulnerable. Over 12 tracks\, he exc avates his life's relationships—romantic\, with his bandmates\, and most ruthlessly\, his relationship to himself. Even if PUP weren’t entirely immune from jam-space spats and band-induced aggravations making this al bum\, they scrapped their tedious perfectionism and rediscovered the joy of making loud music together. They truly had fun this time\, we promis e! Following the release of 2022’s The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND\, their most adventurous and maximalist full-length\, the band’s lives changed s ignificantly. Guitarist Steve Sladkowski got married\, bassist Nestor Ch umak settled into being a dad\, and drummer Zack Mykula moved to a new p lace in Toronto that allowed him to expand his home studio. As the other s were making big decisions and getting their acts together\, Babcock fe lt isolated. He had just ended a decade-long relationship and cut himsel f 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 lon ely 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 s ongs in a year. While writing\, Babcock had time to reflect and maybe ev en 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 Bab cock’s life\, the songs here take a holistic view of his romantic partne rships\, 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 g rowth. It was hard\, occasionally sucked\, but was ultimately worth it. Babcock began to view these songs as a chronology: the opening tunes lik e the blistering “No Hope” and the caustic “Olive Garden” were written f rom the perspective of his past youthful naïveté\, the middle third from frequent bouts of self-loathing\, and the final few cuts from the accep tance that comes with finally getting your shit together. While “Hallway s” was the first song he wrote for the album\, immediately following his breakup\, it’s tucked towards the end of the tracklist. Despite its raw feelings\, there’s levity and heart in its chorus and the lines\, “Caus e when one door closes\, it might never open There might be no other doo rs.” It’s bracing and raw\, but its lightness keeps it together. “There' s a lot of sadness in the back half of the record\, but there's a lot mo re hope here too\,” says Babcock. “I'm just coming to peace with who I a m.” When Babcock brought what he wrote to the rest of the band\, they al l agreed to let the songs develop as organically as possible. “We realiz ed 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 fe ll into place for once. Take the lead single “Paranoid\,” which bursts w ith apocalyptic energy. The song careens from bombastic riffs and Babcoc k’s ferocious screams\, to unrelenting clangs from the rhythm section. I t’s the entire band at its heaviest but the chorus is as anthemic and in fectious as anything they’ve ever done. It’s quintessential PUP. “We str addle the line between it falling off the rails and then being totally i n the pocket\,” says Sladkowski. “But our four disparate personalities a re what make it interesting.” They decamped to Los Angeles to work with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent\, Death Cab For Cutie\, Mannequin P ussy). In the studio\, he helped the band work through their nagging ten dency to overthink things. When they’d like how a take sounded\, he’d re mind them that they didn’t have to try it again. He’d tell them when son gs 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 J ohn\, getting out of our heads made it fun.” Congleton also gave the ban d the space to\, in their words\, “completely annihilate” the track “Hun ger For Death” and rewrite it in the studio. On “Get Dumber\,” which fea tures backing vocals from Jeff Rosenstock\, there’s a flubbed line (inst ead of “It’s pretty fucking obnoxious\,” Rosenstock yelps\, “ah\, lyrics …”). On playback\, the mistake made the song even more special. They rec orded 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 ly rics 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 fuck ing awesome.” Compared to the rest of their catalog\, Who Will Look Afte r The Dogs? evokes the lightning-in-a-bottle intensity of their self-tit led debut (except they are much better at their instruments now). Though they’re all well out of their reckless twenties and have played nearly a thousand shows since then\, there’s still unpredictable mayhem in the arrangements and an acerbic bite in the writing. “Because we were less p recious with everything this time\, it felt like we were capturing the f eeling of being in a band for the first time when you finally hear every thing clicking\,” says Babcock. There’s even a newfound optimism and hop e here\, especially on the surprisingly graceful closer “Shut Up.” Durin g the penultimate track “Best Revenge\,” Babcock sings\, “The best reven ge is living well Didn’t even know what was right in front of me.” Even when things seem irrevocably fraught and you slip back into stupid old h abits\, being around your closest friends can get you through. Or\, at t he 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 y ou 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.”\n\nTick ets: https://tixr.com/e/193225\n\nhttps://findlocal.community/event/d43f 1712-154e-4487-8702-f4a1a9a5f78d LOCATION:HI-FI Indy and HI-FI Annex\, 1043 Virginia Ave UNIT 4\, Indianap olis\, IN 46203 URL:https://findlocal.community/event/d43f1712-154e-4487-8702-f4a1a9a5f78 d STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR