PUP Announce Tour + Share New Single "Get Dumber" ft. Jeff Rosenstock

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. The band have already previewed the record with “Hallways” and “Paranoid,” and today they share another ripper entitled “Get Dumber” featuring long-time buddy and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock. PUP have also announced they will return to Australia in August for a headline tour around the country!

On the scathing “Get Dumber,” with backing vocals and unintentionally flubbed lyrics from Jeff Rosenstock, PUP is classically searing in all the best ways.

Stefan Babcock says of the song, “I wrote “Get Dumber” in Jeff’s basement. I was house sitting for him while he was on tour. I recorded the first demo for it on his guitar using his mics and his computer. Maybe because the ghost of Jeff was in the room with me, I always imagined our voices on this song together, so I was very happy when he agreed to sing on it.

“We recorded the vocals together, in the same room, facing each other. What that means is, we both had to nail it at the same time because we couldn’t really cut between takes. On the first take, he forgot a line in the second verse and said “ahhhhhh, lyrics” instead. I couldn’t finish the take because I was laughing too hard. Anyway, he practiced singing the correct lyrics but then we decided those lyrics kinda sucked and he should just stick to “ahhhh lyrics” because it’s funny and the song is called Get Dumber. We nailed it on the second take.”

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 the course of 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), and 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 to 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.

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“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 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.”

PUP will return to Australia this August for a headline tour around the country. Last spied Down Under in 2022 for Splendour In The Grass, the PUP tour will kick off in Brisbane on August 8 and will do a lap around the continent, with stops in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Tickets on sale Friday March 29 via puptheband.com