PUP – ‘Who Will Look After The Dogs?’ album review: no-brain, all-guts
THE SKINNY: There’s a tendency to overthink these things, and that’s an overstatement. By ‘these things’, I mean absolutely everything about music: being in a band, making music, even writing about music. So, in the spirit of PUP‘s fifth album, Who Will Look After The Dogs?, which was made specifically on a mission not to do that, I’ll try not to either.
Across all their albums, PUP seem obsessed with the act of being a band and the state of being in a band. Their last album, The Unravelling of PUPTHEBAND, was an almost meta take on that as the group pondered the intensely precarious nature of modern music. We see it play out week on week, month on month, era upon era. Bands come together, they make incredible work, and then they completely and utterly fall apart. There are a plethora of reasons for this imminent arc, as the band gratuitously put it, ‘If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will’.
But when it came to making this record, the mission was to not do any of that; to shut up and make music, really. Frontman and writer Stefan Babcock wrote way more than usual, the whole band decamped to LA, they chose a producer they knew wouldn’t let them fuck about and they set some rules; if trying to figure something out or decide on something took too long, they scrapped it. There was one aim: stay out of their heads.
The result is a blistering album that keeps you out of yours, too. It consists of 12 compact, lean tracks. It’s a loud record that stays that way even when Babcock is getting heartwrenchingly introspective. “I think I’m falling outta love again,” he sings at one point, staring at himself in the musical mirror he made and lamenting “nothing is enough.” On ‘Hallway’, the punky tune holds some gut-punches as he sings, “’Cause when one door closes, it might never open / There might be no other doors,” but still, the energy never dips. Across the project, he’s facing up to a lot: his youth, failed relationships, broken friendships, and their well-trodden path of considering bandmate connections. The mission is a success, though. The album wanders through these topics, being more honest than they’ve ever been, but without getting bogged down by the weight of that.
Instead, it’s all catharsis, set to an instrumentation that simply sounds like a really good rock show as they refused to overthink or overdo craft either and more than benefit from that no-brain, all-guts approach.
For fans of: Rock shows and ranting about your ex.
A concluding comment from your ex: “For heaven’s sake, leave my legacy be.”
Who Will Look After The Dogs? Track by track
Release date: 2nd May | Producer: John Congleton | Label: Diminishing Returns
‘No Hope’: A loud opener for a loud album, if you think it’s too much, don’t touch that volume dial. Embrace it. [3/5]
‘Olive Garden’: Babcock returns to the simple joys of his youth to face up to the fact that it’s gone now. Instrumentally foolproof, it’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s good. [3/5]
‘Concrete’: Again, nothing revolutionary but good and punchy with some tough emotional upper cuts in there. [3/5]
‘Get Dumber’: Straying more towards a pub rock sound, this one is really fun and truly lives up to the high-octane, no-thinking, all-feeling ethos of the album. [3.5/5]
‘Hunger For Death’: “Fuck everyone in this venue, especially me,” Babcock sings in what might just be the album’s unexpected highlight. [4/5]
‘Needed To Hear It’: Once again, do not adjust that volume dial. The band get even more angsty, even louder and even better as the record ticks towards its second side. [3.5/5]
‘Paranoid’: Overwhelmingly, I’m just thinking about how much I’d like to hear these tracks live as the band clearly focused on doing little more on this album than they could do on stage, preserving the energy of an eardrum-rattling rock show. [3/5]
‘Falling Outta Love’: Recently went through a breakup? This one’s for you, especially if you suspect that maybe, you were the problem. Babcock is at his most angsty on this track and the next so the unlucky in love can lock in. [3.5/5]
‘Hallway’: “Cause when one door closes, it might never open / There might be no other doors,” Babcock sings here, so if you’re in that kind of gloomy mood, you’ll eat this up. [3.5/5]
‘Cruel’: The energy picks up again with one of the album’s best and most full-of-life guitar parts that sucks you in from the start. [3.5/5]
‘Best Revenge’: Another great guitar part that makes the record all the more dynamic, even in its final moments. [3/5]
‘Shut Up’: A perfectly attitude-packed final remark for the band’s punchiest album yet. [3/5]
Never Miss A Beat
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