PUP – Who Will Look After The Dogs?
Release Date: 2nd May 2025
Label: Diminishing Returns Music Corp
Critically acclaimed Canadian punks PUP continue to further push the boundaries of their songwriting and guitar amps with this fifth full length studio offering Who Will Look After The Dogs?
Having firmly carved their niche over the last eleven years in producing their own signature blend of infectiously catchy, fuzzed out pop punk anthems (affectionately complimented with singer Stefan Babcocks recognizably outspoken sincerity), you’d be forgiven to assume there surely must be a limit to how many choruses an audience could possibly memorise to chant back.
Thankfully PUP’s wry and morbid humour over everything life throws at you (especially when you’re grafting as a touring punk band), serves as a particularly solid foundation for the groups all killer no filler attitude. While their cynical candour is firmly established at this point, it by no means feels overplayed or diluted.
‘No Hope’ opens this record as a fast paced, high-octane slacker anthem, stacked with loose and noisy guitar barrages, and as many gang vocal chant opportunities as you can squeeze into a track that’s less than two minutes. ‘Get Dumber’ continues with the high squealing feedback, and cranked-within-an-inch-of-their-life guitar riffs, alongside lead solo lines that elegantly tumble in and out of key under Babcocks declarations. Flawlessly paired with a feature from the equally chaotic punk styling of Jeff Rosenstock feels like an obvious match made in heaven.
Things take a slight step back in ‘Hunger For Death’, a waltzing ode to the malaise. Opening on gentle string pads and pianos alongside the lines of “Fuck everyone on this planet, except for you”, before the full band joins in cacophony to fill out this folk punk ballad. ‘Paranoid’ finds the band at their most quintessential. A heavily fuzzed out psalm to self-deprecation and lament over failing love, which somehow still feels upbeat hyperbolically to the barking vocals and lyrical content, complete with a gigantic half time closing riff to keep those in the mosh pit motivated.
At the tail end of this record finds the band at their most honest and existential. ‘Best Revenge’ is a bittersweet, sun-bleached sing-a-long, packed with low fi melodies and dripping in chorus tones, while ‘Shut Up’ is a surprisingly stripped back reflection on personal burnout.
Overall, this album is a cathartic outburst amidst its tongue-in-cheek melancholia, which poses to ask; when the formula works this well, do you need to teach an old dog new tricks?
FFO: Jeff Rosenstock / Joyce Manor / Sorority Noise
Recommended Track: Best Revenge