Toronto’s PUP To Deliver ‘Weird and Different’ Livestream

The Toronto-based punk band PUP has just released “Rot,” the noisy first single from its forthcoming EP,  This Place Sucks Ass. The album comes out on Oct. 23 via Little Dipper/Rise Records. 

In celebration of the EP’s release, PUP will play its first-ever livestreamed show — appropriately titled This Stream Sucks Ass — at 9 p.m. EST on the day the album comes out.  

“What can you expect from the livestream?” asks the band in a press release. “Like most regular PUP shows, it’ll probably be a bit of a trainwreck, which is really all part of the magic. We don’t know if it’ll be any good, but we do promise it will be weird and different from any livestream you’ve ever seen. It’s being directed by our pal (and 5th member of PUP) Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux, who has also directed almost all of our music videos. It will be fun and unhinged and entirely unprofessional. Am I selling it? I think I’m selling it.”

After recording 2019’s Morbid Stuff, PUP had a handful of songs that didn’t make the final tracklist, largely because they were too frenetic or too unhinged. That set included a punked up cover of Grandaddy’s “A.M. 180” (as made popular by the zombie apocalypse film 28 Days Later).

Drawn by Canadian artist Brandon Lepine, the album’s cover art depicts an apocalyptic neon nightmare — there’s a limited edition animated picture disc vinyl to match). The title comes from an inside joke that seems particularly revenant given the state of the world.

“It was a thing we used to say as a joke a million times on tour,” frontman Stefan Babcock says. “Literally any city, whether it was Lethbridge, Alberta, or New York City, we’d be like, ‘This place sucks ass.’ We have so much negativity, and sometimes, it becomes so extreme and ridiculous that we start to find it funny. But at this moment in time, it feels so fucking real. Wherever you are, it sucks ass right now. So, wherever you live, whatever your circumstances, this is an EP about the place you’re from, and the place you’re at now.”

The band hopes, however, that the album will help listeners “find collective empowerment and joy.”

“Everything sucks and that’s OK, because it sucks for everybody,” says Babcock. “And we can make it a little bit better by being together in the shittiness.”

Photo: Jess Baumung