PUP: Who Will Look After the Dogs?

I think this is emo? E-mo. Em-oh! I don’t know what to call anything anymore, but PUP has been pumping out its brand of self-flagellating Canadian pop punk, post-hardcore rock ‘n’ roll for some time now. They have a very singular aesthetic that announces itself on every album — and Who Will Look After the Dogs? is no different. Gang choruses, loudness and a sprinkling of chaos. Sounds good to me.

PUP is one of those bands that manage to sound both tuneful and would also drive the uninitiated insane with their bombast. You could grab little snippets here and there that sound almost Weezer-like, but they surround it with so much sound and banging it’s not at all that. But it’s also not the ska punk wackiness of their obvious mentor or inspiration, Jeff Rosenstock, who actually appears on the album on a track called “Get Dumber.” Because of course he does. Though the Internet tells me lead singer / songwriter, Stefan Babcock, was in a band called Stop Drop N Skank in high school, so maybe the Rosenstock thing makes even more sense than I could have imagined.

The album actually starts off on a concerning note for me, with the production on “No Hope” somehow being noisier and more crammed with stuff than anything before it. Just fuzz and aggression pushed to the breaking point. And it’s not to say that the production on the rest of the album won’t definitely test the limits of your tweeters, but it dials it back just enough that the breakup sounds intentional and not like someone leaned against the board and accidentally twiddled or slid something they shouldn’t have.

Babcock definitely sings like he’s in an emo punk band. He’s got a little Les Savy Fav going on with his talk-singing yelps, but instead of harassing our eardrums to the point of bloodiness, the band will downshift time signatures and do that group sung chorus thing that I’m a total sucker for. They also use the echo effect tin a way that doesn’t totally wig me out. I still don’t love that shouting-in-an-empty warehouse sound, however, but at least the vocals don’t get drowned in fuzz and reverb to the point of being indecipherable. The music can be a bit hectic and cacophonous at times but when the band focuses their sound and leans into their pop punk thing it really swings. It’s an album that takes a couple times through to really work its way into your head — after which it won’t leave. Damned Canadians.