PUP Announce New Album out 5/2 + Share First Single

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? On May 2nd via Little Dipper / Rise Records. 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 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). It 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 with 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. They had fun this time, we swear.

PRE-ORDER WHO WILL LOOK AFTER THE DOGS? NOW

Also out today is the album’s lead single, “Hallways.” The first song Babcock wrote for the album, “Hallways,” is bracing and raw, but its lightness keeps it together: “Cause when one door closes, it might never open / There might be no other doors.” Listen to the song and watch the incredibly surreal music video, directed by Sterling Larose, now HERE.

“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 the 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.”

Album Artwork | Download here

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