Sunday Music: "Hunger For Death" By Pup

The intro to this song - I spit out my coffee in the car when it started, because - I just started laughing,

The new Pup is their pandemic (and post-pandemic) thoughts, finally seeing the light of day. They’re trading the tour bus turmoil stories for a newfound existential turmoil that, while it rhymes with the old ways, this is NEW territory for them.

How can a person be violent, bordering on insane, and still lovely, loyal, and logical?

I don’t know, but I know what it sounds like, and it sounds like “Hunger for Death.”

This album is running as a reminder, as I try to work out what they’re saying and what it’s making me feel, that we don’t need crisp edges on every story.

It’s impressionistic, as much as it is music school dork-punk.

Maybe I just need the cathartic experience of learning these words and seeing them on their next tour. Or, maybe, in my car and in my headphones, I just need to sit with this sentiment,

I want to know the truth too. I want to know my people too. I want to have it in a sing-songy tumbler of a song, burning my throat on the way down, and warming my belly on a Toronto-cold night.

How does this band do it.

One insight, and one essential shoutout, they did get John Congleton to do the record which might explain some stuff. You might at least recognize his name from his band The Paper Chase (I always liked this song), but his credits include everything from scoring parts of Friday Night Lights (he did weird stuff apparently, not to be confused with the super Texas cowboy emo stuff that Explosions In The Sky did, for example, listen to this), to recording all sorts of other reputable acts from Lucy Dacus to AJJ.

Congleton’s a perfect pick, I think. And, either way, if Canada is kind of a northern Texas (not a political comment!), maybe this is why the sounds all work as well as they do. I’m in on this song and this record.

What do you think? Is PUP hitting you like they’re hitting me? And, how about the title of this album - I know, right?!