with The Drew Thomson Foundation Scorpion Hill, track five on PUPs
newest record Morbid Stuff, rings out, Ive been having some pretty
dark thoughts. I like them a lot. That fucked-up, sick-in-the-head
point of view sums up the album perfectly. Its a black comedy. Its a
snuff film with a laugh track. To PUP, life is a cruel joke, but its a
good-ass joke tho.Stefan Babcock, Nestor Chumak, Zack Mykula and Steve
Sladkowski the four lifelong friends who comprise PUP have a mantra:
Life is shit, find the light. And it works! With two
critically-acclaimed albums and five years of touring under their
belt, PUP are now world-renowned for turning inner darkness into
recklessness and pure fun. On Morbid Stuff, PUP doubles down on that
dichotomy and blows it up projection-style, onto the biggest wall
possible, teetering in plain sight between gleeful chaos and complete
despair.The album was written and recorded over a half year span in
Toronto, and was produced by their longtime friend Dave Schiffman
(Vampire Weekend, Weezer, The Mars Volta). It was the longest the band
had ever spent writing or recording and, in fact, was the longest
period of time they'd spent at home since starting this band 5 years
ago. "We were really proud of what we did on the first two records,
but they were both really rushed," says drummer Zack Mykula. On The
Dream Is Over, we were scrambling between tours to flesh out songs and
record an album. We didn't want that to happen again. This time they
spent months in the basement, no breaks, 7 days a week, trading off
between laughing til they cried and plotting each others' deaths. The
result is Morbid Stuff. It's their best record yet. It's their most
focused record yet. It's at points their bleakest record and at other
points, far and away their most hopeful. It is the sound of one of the
most exciting punk bands of the past decade hitting their stride. The
album kicks off with the title track, a laundry list of evil thoughts
that rattle through singer Stefan Babcocks mind daily. It moves on to
Kids, a song he affectionately refers to as, a love song from one
nihilistic depressive to another. The lyrics dance from song to song
through heartbreak, broken dreams, hating yourself, and castigating
yourself for thinking you matter enough to even bother hating
yourself. That spiral of negative thinking and depression is a daily
struggle for Stefan. Hes tried everything therapy, exercise,
meditation, the South Beach Diet... The only medications that truly
work, though, are laughing at himself and celebrating his misery with
his best friends. Its funny, because when Im writing alone, most of
the songs start off in a bad bad place emotionally, Stefan recalls. Im
just sorta probing the darkness. But by the time the band is through
with them, the darkness starts to feel real good. Like were all
celebrating how fucked up everything is. I guess when your day job is
hanging out with your friends and trying to do something productive
with your self-destruction, the whole thing can start feeling pretty
weird and pretty hilarious.Finding humor in the heartache is a pretty
steady theme throughout Morbid Stuff. And for Stefan, the sickest joke
of all is his own career, which he tears into with full abandon on the
records heaviest song, Full Blown Meltdown. Ill be sure to write it
down when I hit rock bottom, he howls. For all the people who love to
fetishize problems // And to tell the truth, I fetishize them too. Its
pretty messed up, isnt it?! How ridiculous is it to make money writing
about being a fuckup? If there were any justice, you would at the very
least be scolded for ruining your own life. But PUP is now three
albums deep into a successful music career while never writing a
single song about doing things right. That annoying paradox is
acknowledged over and over again on Morbid Stuff, as the band tackles
what Stefan repeatedly refers to as, A hell of his own making. He says
it plainly on the irresistible garage banger See You At Your Funeral,
and alludes to it again on Bare Hands. The final slow-burner track,
City creeps along sinisterly for almost half the song until it
explodes with Stefan roaring, When I try to claw out of the pit, all I
do is get sucked back in // Dont wanna love you anymore, but I just
cant help it. Anyone who hears that song will notice the
self-deprecating, self-aware nature of this band. It's four guys in
emotional ruin finding humour and catharsis in the turmoil. The
coldest truth presented on the entire album might be just that: having
problems is funny. Sure it sucks, but it's so, so funny. When you're
truly depressed, your life becomes a caricature of itself, your
reactions Shakespearean. You're a moron with a dumb brain that hates
living for no reason, but if youre one of the lucky few, you can laugh
at how absurd it is to not enjoy life.And that's the record. It's
sadness, realizing you created that sadness yourself, and cackling in
the dark at your sadness. Morbid Stuff is the most insightful,
sweetest, funniest, grossest, angriest, saddest and most inescapably
desperate collection of songs PUP has recorded to date. It's all the
fury and celebration you've come to know, but rooted in an
understanding of where that fury comes from. If their 2014 self-titled
record was the fuse, and The Dream Is Over was the bomb going off,
Morbid Stuff is your family sifting through the rubble, only to find
you giggling while you bleed to death. Cost: 20.00 to 22.00
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01/03/2020 Last update