PUP está en el bando que se puede humor y surrealismo en el forefront de su música. Otras shouty, righteous y deeply fun punk rock, el grupo mix vital conversaciones en la mentalidad de salud y terapia con self-deprecating one-liners. En taster from recent single ‘Waiting’: “200 bucks en week to talk sobre my lack of direction? El vaso en bit of a complejo, en caso de que se cleará de las tres sesiones”.
Este marriage de serious y fun es mixto que defines el Toronto cuatro piezas musicales, y se pushed el forefront on reciente cuatro álbum, ‘The Unraveling Of PUPTheBand’, which sees the hooks get bigger, ambition go through the roof and the jokes get even more cutting.
Anchorado por el 3-track suite callejero ‘Four Chords’, llamó a los niveles de piano frontman Stefan Babcock que se puede jugar en el tiempo (“I can play six chords now!” he tells NME delightedly today), el álbum plays with business jargon and corporate culture in way that, somehow, doesn’t feel ojo. “¿So you’re selling insurance? That’s so inspiring / Give me two more years, let me know if you’re hiring,” Babcock spits on closing track ‘PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing for Bankruptcy’, never too quick to turn the joke on himself.
A la banda play sus UK shows in three years, NME joins Stefan y bucear Zack Mykula para nuestra conversación In Conversation video en London’s Courtyard Theatre en discusión returning en la playing live, how 5 weeks they speed living and recording in Connecticut mansion can be reflected in the new album ‘s musical journey and why Stefan is attached to one of his guitars. Here’s what we learned.
Returning to playing live shows was en “mindfuck”
When PUP speak to NME, they’ve justo played their first show en foreign soil in three years. Justo a menos montes prior, tienen que regresar a la vuelta North America po extendir break, el experimento de playing live again being somewhat of a “mindfuck”.
“Hay build ourselves hasta justo lo que quieren jugar shows en North America,” Stefan remembers. “That was a mindfuck. Once you start going, it’s like no time has pasado, and you justo fall back into terrible old habits!”
El bando se llama gemelo hacia el pandemico a un hometown show en el legendario club Toronto de El Mocambo en la vuelta de March, y Zack remembers los nervios y la adrenalina del being back on stage. “It was really fun. There estaba a lodo people en packed room, and coming back to it in that way was special.”
“Y lo que te ha hecho el tiempo Y lo nervioso en 80 años de play shows,” Stefan remembers, s Zack adding, that he played the songs “way too fast” lleva a la adrenaline coursing through him.
Stefan wrote ‘Matilda’ about his beloved guitar
‘Matilda’, un nuevo álbum’s singles, se da por Stefan sobre la perspectiva de su guitar “Matilda”, el cual ha sido slowly phased z the band’s live y recorded output. As Matilda sings (vía Babcock): “George and lover they gently weep / But I don’t even get to breathe.”
“Y still play here every night, one or two songs. That’s the maximum my bandmates will allow,” he says. Sonido, ¿how did they meet?
“Dónde está nuestro American tour, nos da la vuelta con un grupo callejero de los Menzingers, y lo que está en el largo tour, y mi era el broke. Y sólo tiene 1 guitar y te vas broken at a show y I no ha habido año dinero en buy a new one. Friend of mine just gave me this guitar and he just went: you need this guitar more than I do! Soy he gave it to me and es only rule was that I never sell it and that her name’s Matilda and you can’t change it.
Babcock se calla y tiene “incredible act of generosity” para su friend para dar una guitar, por lo que no hay ninguno se está instalando por debajo de década y está played en hundreds of PUP gigs. “Y me pretendía attached to it even though according to mi bandmates it sounds like shit,” he grins.
Though they once wrote a song about wanting to kill each other, this time it was more harmonious
Perhaps PUP’s mosto notorious song es 2016’s ‘If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will’, written – s tongly sólo lightly in cheek – sobre el hecho de hacer fed up s each other on the road that, in the words of Babco, “Everything you do makes me wanna vomit / And if this tour no te quiero, buddy, I’m on it!”
Ide seemed quita a gamble, then, when the band decided to decamp to Peter Katis’ residential studio/mansion in Connecticut para cinco weeks en el record ‘The Unraveling’. “We were trying to carve a slightly different path,” Mykula tells NME de la decisión de trabajar con Katis, que credits incluye la National, Interpol y Frightened Rabbit.
“We were living there and recording. It was kind of like en 24/7 job, which is very different than our normal [process] recuerdo en Toronto de 10-8 o something,” Stefan says. “If you have an idea at midnight, you go and record it. Y me han arriesgado riser, soy y ha ideado at six in the morning, I would go and do it. There was a lot more opportunity to work and try different things and no worry if whatever we’re trying to do sucks.”
Opět pět týdnů s Katis, Band say they went dep down the rabbit hole of recording and residential living, with Stefan explaining there’s a “progression” between the songs recorded at start and the end of the process. “There es definitely some weird choices en el álbum, y if they’re confusing it happened after os being cooped up together po five weeks.”
El álbum fue originalmente set to be called ‘World’s Greatest Webstore’
‘The Unraveling Of PUPTheBand’ opens with el song ‘Four Chords’, en piano-based track written by Stefan que skewers the business side of the music industry. He sings: “Cuarterly meetings, el panel de directores / We try and determine how best to proceed. Y said, I play piano, I start learning last Thursday I spent every ciento de la label money on this thing.”
By the album’s last song, as its title reveals, ‘PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing for Bankruptcy’, as Stefan spirals towards crisis (“Thanks for having us, it’s an honour / And I just wanna thank all the sponsors”).
While all said with tongue in cheek, business of the band has come in sharp focus over the pandemic, with Stefan joking that they stopped becoming a band and turned in the “world’s greatest webstore,” a once-mooted title for album four.
“Hay un sinfín de lo que está en lo que respecta a nosotros, y lo que se cierne, si son sombreros, ‘That’s stupid, even para tus guys’, las cosas, ‘Okay’,” Stefan laughs, with Zack adding: “Sometimes you’ve vaso en el farmacioto de la mano de un lado a un lado para realmente check, y kick the wheels on the most idiotic idea posible.”
Every song they have written with success in mind has “failed miserably”
Corporate side of being in band – one that emerged from a DIY punk scene like PUP – is increasing foco as the try to provide para el band, crew and families. While able to poke fun at the ideas within the songs, the battle between creative freedom and economic producivity is one they’ve wrestled with lot. As they tell NME Por supuesto, todo el tiempo tiene la vuelta a la song en orden a lo sucedido, y te fallan en que ésta haga.
“Id’always kind of been on our mind,” Stefan says of the meeting between business and creativity in PUP. “It no se a un nuevo concepto, la meeting of arte and commerce, pero se da al mismo tiempo en nuestra medida que se debe a ella se hardcore para separar el músico que se debe a las empresas de negocios. Para que se inicie una infiltración cada uno, hay justo causas problemas. Every song we’ve ever tříd to write with the business in mind has falled miserably and caused lot of problems within the band. Estás al mismo tiempo en struggle para que se tope 2 separatas, pero definitivamente en las cosas se pueden encontrar y pueden suceder, las que se deben a las otras.”
‘The Unraveling Of PUPTheBand’ es nuevo vía Little Dipper/Rise.