About the album

The Toronto rockers are back this week with ‘The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND,’ an album that can only be described as the most PUP experience possible. For fans of the quartet, that’s a great thing.

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At the risk of overselling their new album, PUP have likened it to the most powerful orgasm you will ever experience. They’ve arrived at this conclusion through the typical PUP creative process, like a reverse Be Sharps—someone makes an unfathomably dumb joke that makes the others groan in disgust, and then it somehow sticks around long enough until everyone agrees it’s kinda brilliant. Drummer Zack Mykula introduces the concept of “creative edging” to describe how PUP have perpetually pushed the boundaries of good taste throughout their existence, only to practice restraint at the last possible moment in the name of artistic decorum. But now with The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND, they are … um, holding nothing back. “In this case, the orgasm is that we’ve lost our minds and that’ll go on the record,” says Mykula.

Whether or not their fourth album is their best or most artistically challenging is irrelevant toward their aims of being the most PUP. This mostly means following through on the nuttier ideas that they now have the resources, confidence, and autonomy to pull off without being told no. “For three records straight, what we’ve noticed is that the dumb, goofy, very PUP stuff that you’d never hear on the radio is the stuff that connects with people,” frontman Stefan Babcock says, whereas the moments when they intentionally “tried to break through to a wider audience” fell flat.

At first, it’s difficult to ascertain the read Babcock has on his own music—play their previous albums The Dream Is Over or Morbid Stuff to an unfamiliar listener and I imagine they’d immediately identify the blood-boiling shout-alongs “DVP” and “Kids,” or maybe the beer-swinging group chant of “Sleep in the Heat” as most likely to be “the hits.” And that is indeed the case, as they’re the most streamed songs on Spotify, racking up more than 18, 14, and 9 million plays, respectively. But erstwhile producer and formative mentor Dave Schiffman confirms PUP’s ill-fated dip in the mainstream, mentioning an undisclosed track from The Dream Is Over that the band felt lukewarm about but was deemed by management as having “big radio potential.” “In the interest of being team players, we went in and tried to construct … a more ‘radio-friendly’ version of that song,” Schiffman says in an email. After the tweaks and remixes and overdubs failed to yield the desired results, the idea of making a PUP pop hit became a running joke for the rest of their working relationship. ​​“I always felt as though it was more about making a great record and doing what each song needs to be compelling and sound like PUP,” he continues. “If at that point something happens at radio then it would be organic, not contrived or forced.”

PUP sees The Unraveling as their reward for a decade of failing up in a most organic way. Ever since they started out as Topanga in 2010, the Toronto quartet has realized perpetually escalating commercial and critical fortunes for music that is shockingly energetic and galvanizing, given how much of it is about feeling like the world’s biggest fuck-up. (Their name is, after all an acronym for “Pathetic Use of Potential.”) The Unraveling opener “Four Chords” tells the origin story of the piano Babcock plays on it—he spent the label advance and learned just enough to make a “dumb” song about it. He laments how his friends have moved on to listening to “noise punk or nothing,” and then it swells into Bright Eyes–esque drunken orchestral chorale. Which is actually a sign of restraint, given the band’s original “ridiculous, Disney-style arrangement.” “We can’t go John Williams–core,” says guitarist Steve Sladkowski. Closer “PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing for Bankruptcy” throws in a saxophone solo, mostly because the band imagined it as something a typical PUP fan would actively dislike. And though The Unraveling bears many of the tokens of earned indulgence—pianos, trap drums, horns, interludes, and reprises—PUP have not made their Kid A, let alone Metal Machine Music. Lead single “Waiting” hinges on what Babcock called “the simplest, most uplifting chorus I could write.” I’ve seen “Robot Writes a Love Song” compared to Weezer numerous times.

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Read more on https://www.theringer.com/music/2022/3/31/23004020/pup-the-unraveling-of-puptheband-new-album-interview

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“We love that fucking album. Absolutely obsessed with it!” - No Brainer

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