PUP WILL HONOR THE BELOVED CHAIN RESTAURANT FOR ONE
NIGHT ONLY ON MAY 1ST ALBUM RELEASE PARTY - DETAILS BELOW
WATCH / SHARE “OLIVE GARDEN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “OLIVE GARDEN” HERE
NEW ALBUM, WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS?, OUT MAY 2 VIA LITTLE DIPPER / RISE RECORDS
PRE-SAVE WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? HERE
MORE CANADIAN TOUR DATES ADDED WITH SNOTTY NOSE REZ KIDS - FULL WORLD WIDE TOUR LISTED BELOW
MEGA-CITY MADNESS, A SIX NIGHT TOUR THROUGHOUT SIX DIFFERENT TORONTO VENUES, FEATURING A NEW GUEST EVERY NIGHT - BEGINNING JULY 13
"Who Will Look After the Dogs? feels fully realized, acting as a tight group hug celebrating what it means to be in a band, growing alongside each other. " CBC Music
“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)
Photo Credit Vanessa Heins // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
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? this Friday, May 2 via Little Dipper / Rise Records. Today, they share one final album teaser with “Olive Garden”, a caustic track written from the perspective of Babcock’s past youthful naivete that started as an acoustic demo and turned into one of the heaviest songs on the record. The band is also sharing a video as goofy as the song, created by the band's own Nestor.
"This is a very stupid, but also wonderful song. The band gets all the credit for turning it into something really special,” says Babcock. “Zack (who plays drums) heard my cute little acoustic guitar demo and decided we should try and make it as heavy as possible. Which is objectively, a very annoying thing to suggest. But you know what, I’m glad I kept my stupid mouth shut, because it works. There’s a real magic in the way these sweet vocal melodies are bludgeoned by a wall of disgusting, grinding, detuned guitars. The whole song is kinda upsetting and uncomfortable but also, catchy and fun. And I don’t care what anyone says, ‘Olive Garden’ rhymes with ‘Grandma in a coffin’ – listen to this crap and tell me I’m wrong."
WATCH / SHARE “OLIVE GARDEN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “OLIVE GARDEN” HERE
FUN FACT: the nearest Olive Garden to Toronto is on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls. In fact, there are only nine locations in all of Canada, and we’re only somewhat confident that they are still up and running. On May 1, PUP will make that 10! That’s right, PUP are bringing Olive Garden back to Toronto, baby. Before album release this Friday, lucky Torontonians will be treated to a very special and very committed-to-the-bit album launch party. The event will feature an album playback, short live set from PUP, Olive Garden-inspired music, decor, and food from Matty Matheson’s beloved Rizzo's House of Parm, and more surprises to come. You will be utterly transported to your favorite Italian chain restaurant with unlimited breadsticks. Because when you’re here, you’re family! RSVP here.
Reminder to call your dogsitter, because PUP will bring Who Will Look After The Dogs? on the road all year, touring the UK/EU, Australia and of course North America. The North American run will be a co-headline tour with long-time friend and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock. See below to find a show near you, and get your tickets at puptheband.com.
And 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.
WATCH / SHARE “GET DUMBER” FT. JEFF ROSENSTOCK HERE
BUY / STREAM “GET DUMBER” FT. JEFF ROSENSTOCK HERE
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.”
WATCH / SHARE “HALLWAYS” HERE
BUY / STREAM “HALLWAYS” HERE
MORE ON PUP & WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS?
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.”
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
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
07/13/25 - Toronto, ON - House Show
07/14/25 - Toronto, ON - Sneaky Dees’s w/ Bad Waitress
07/15/25 - Toronto, ON - Lee’s Palace w/ Solids
07/17/25 - Toronto, ON - The Concert Hall w/ Jeff Rosenstock (solo)
07/18/25 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall w/ Cadence Weapon
07/19/25 - Toronto, ON - History w/ NOBRO
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 +^
11/24/25 - Vancouver BC @ The Pearl #
11/25/25 - Vancouver BC @ The Commodore #
11/28/25 - Edmonton AB @ Midway Music Hall #
11/29/25 - Calgary AB @ MacEwan Hall #
12/01/25 - Saskatoon SK @ Coors Event Centre #
12/02/25 - Winnipeg MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre #
12/05/25 - Montreal QC @ MTELUS #
12/06/25 - Ottawa ON @ The Bronson #
12/09/25 - Waterloo ON @ Maxwell's Concerts & Events #
12/11/25 - London ON @ London Music Hall #
12/12/25 - Oshawa ON @ BOND ST Event Centre #
12/13/25 - Hamilton ON @ Bridgeworks #
* support from Illuminati Hotties
& support from Goo
^ support from Ekko Astral
# support from Snotty Nose Rez Kids
+ denotes co-headline dates with Jeff Rosenstock
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
