Sunday Music: Morbid Stuff (PUP)

April 07, 2019

PUP has been putting out fun, punky-hardcore-singalong-type songs for almost 10-years and two things have happened:

1. They’ve gotten older

2. They keep getting better

The new album, Morbid Stuff is easily their best to date. Combining the big-sounding rock of Pinkerton-era Weezer, with a later period Descendants/All punk energy (complete with the occasional time signature change), and Front Bottoms-esque shaky vocals, poetic lyricism, and big-chorus singalongs, this album quite literally explodes.

Like the rest of us mere mortals, aging adds nuance and dimensionality. When an artist notices and adds it to the craft, amazing things happen. I can’t say what I’m hearing are their specific influences, but I can say the result is uniquely their own – and that’s a major, major accomplishment.

Most notably, beyond the anthemic nature of it all, are the way the lyrics fit into everything else. There’s a lot about death and dying here, but it’s all told through the lens of living. Living may be the opposite of death, but living also envelopes suffering and celebrating. PUP puts the full range of these spectrums on display lyrically, musically and dynamically. I’ll spare drawing a bunch of graphs and ask that you think about this album with contrast in mind. Major key, gang vocal choruses about personal sadness? Check. They’re painting a picture here people – well beyond the pink, party-murder album cover! Credit is due.

From the album’s opener (“Morbid Stuff”):

I was bored as fuck

Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff

Like if anyone I’ve slept with is dead and I got stuck

On death and dying and obsessive thoughts that won’t let up

It makes me feel like I’m about to throw up

To “Kids,” which is where the growing up aspects really start to come out (because you can’t call it “Kids” unless you decisively don’t identify as a kid anymore):

And I had it maxed out

I had a feeling, oh

Nothing is working

And everything’s bleeding, oh

I should’ve tapped out

Given into my demons, oh

It’s alright, it’s just a flesh wound

You said you’d never saw it coming

I’m pretty happy lying here with you

It’s pretty good to feel something

I don’t care about nothing but you

No, I don’t care about nothing

I don’t care about nothing but you

No, I don’t care about nothing

And “Scorpion Hill” where the weight and contrast really set in profoundly on a Canadian-Springsteen kind of sentiment:

Time and time again, well I’ve tried and failed

To get my act together

And I’ll admit lately things really went off the rails

I know that you deserve better

But in the morning, as I was boarding

The commuter train to work

The boss was calling, he said, “There’s been cutbacks and

I’m sorry you’re the first”

And If I can’t support the two of us

How can I support a third?

Down and out, I’ve been on the rocks

I’ve been having some pretty dark thoughts

And I’m on the brink

Fallin’ deep into debt

Fallin’ deep into drink

I can drown those regrets

I don’t have to think

Now I’m working the night shift

Asleep at the wheel

I was bursting apart like a flame from a spark

Thinkin’ “Jesus, this can’t be for real”

I am excited about this band. Maybe not for major commercial success (granted, they could turn out a Panic! At The Disco type hit and I wouldn’t be surprised), but this album should reach a much wider audience than anything they’ve put out previously. Give them a shot, they want your help on those backup vocals. They’ve earned mine.