PUP - The Dream is Over

Pitchfork 78

On a surface level, PUP’s second album is this year’s Celebration Rock or The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us: a half hour of capital-R Rock music, nothing but glorious redlining guitars and pile-on group chants that should be banned in cars for safety purposes. It’s deeply unfashionable and equally vital-sounding, the everyman/Superman appeal of all three enhanced by the setbacks in their origin story. Every review of The Dream is Over is obligated to mention the inspiration behind the album title—after literally shredding his vocal cords, Stefan Babcock was told by a doctor, “the dream is over.” The irony is that Babcock would’ve told you the same thing at any point in the past two years if he never set foot in the office. While Beach Slang and Japandroids use rock music to promise salvation for drunk and aimless weirdos, after playing upwards of 400 shows behind their 2014 self-titled, PUP can only write what they know—which is why the first song is “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will”. Ask Beach Slang if they relate.

Babcock’s homicidal thoughts are countered by panicked, massed vocals that double as restraining orders—“WHY CAN’T WE JUST GET ALONG?” “WHY CAN’T EVERYBODY JUST CHILL?!??” Notice that there’s never any threat to turn the damn van around or just break up. Judging by their insane touring regimen and adrenalized music, this a band that believes it can power through anything by sheer force of will. But even if being in PUP sounds like a living nightmare for Babcock, it’s all he’s got. Gig or no gig, he’s waking up most mornings on the floor with more apologies than dollars in the bank, coming to the same conclusion over and over again: that voice in my head telling me I’m a loser was right all along.

But, as Patrick Stickles once sang, that’s OK. “Now that you’ve finally figured me out/I can go home and rest easier now,” Babcock brays on “Doubts,” one of the many songs on The Dream is Over which retells an involuntary romantic/vocational break up. “What am I supposed to do now?” he asks and it’s not a rhetorical question; The Dream is Over is weirdly pragmatic about hitting bottom. It’s heartening to see PUP’s realm become more mature, mindful and socially conscious, but being constantly broke, hungover and miserable fucking sucks and there’s no way around it. There’s a “don’t fight it, feel it,” philosophy to PUP’s music, validating these emotions with an unapologetically nasty record that lets you work out all of your angst in a safe place.

Babcock yells, “I’ve been blessed with this shit luck,” a sentiment that typically traces back to the Replacements, the patron saints of lovable loser punk. But Babcock’s misery has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with decisions (“And I’m sick and tired of blacking out on my carpet/And waking up all on my own/So I brought you home") and PUP’s music is more based in hyper-aggressive post-hardcore and skate-punk. Babcock’s vocals are clean, yelpy and sing-song melodic, justifying PUP's brief spell on the Warped Tour, but the music takes after the precise assault of Drive Like Jehu in the gymnastic chorus of “Doubts,” Pixies at their most manic (“Sleep in the Heat”), and the hectoring bass assaults of Mclusky (“Old Wounds”). There’s enough self-deprecation to ensure that The Dream is Over never sounds hateful, but the physical violence of the “Reservoir” and “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” videos isn’t entirely played for laughs. Someone is going to get hurt here.

It’s all very effective because the ultimate message is “misery loves company.” Though a far more accomplished and tuneful record than their debut, The Dream Is Over feels just as much a preview for PUP’s live show. Whereas most music of this sort never tries to sound like more than a couple guys in a room, PUP’s approach is so over-the-top that it can sound as CGI’d as any chart-pop; you have to see it in person just to find out if they can really pull this off. Can they really nail the heart-stopping segue between “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You” and “DVP”? How can anyone play as melodically and as fast as they do on “DVP”? On every single chorus, the four members of PUP sound like 4000, is that really how it comes off in a room or is it because they rightfully expect everyone in the crowd to shout along? Frankly, the energy and intensity that’s channeled into the first half of The Dream is Over feels utterly impossible, especially given the subject matter.

But even at 31 minutes, Babcock’s relentless self-loathing can go from intoxicating to simply toxic; it’s fitting that “My Life is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier” and “Can’t Win” are immediately followed by a song called “Familiar Patterns.” Babcock finally steps out of himself on the closing “Pine Point.” Inspired by the 2011 interactive web documentaryWelcome to Pine Point, Babcock looks back and remembers his brother dying in a drunken car crash, walks around the abandoned Northwest Territories mining town and sees Pine Point as a fate far worse than death or even his current situation ("Imagine if your hometown never changed" goes the tagline). As a sort of pop-punk Greek chorus, the band repeats “I hope you know what you’re doing” over anxious minor chords, cautionary advice that had about as much impact on them as “the dream is over.” They’ve tried so hard and got so far only to find out in the end, it doesn’t even matter. So the only thing to do is keep moving—if that tour didn’t kill PUP, nothing will.

Drowned In Sound 70

How Babcock came back from that point, now finding himself the leader of a band who have not mellowed but certainly developed more strings to their punk rock bow, seems irrelevant - here they are, raging, whirling and screaming once more.

Dogged by cringingly honest self doubt, Babcock, along with born-to-lose poets like Patrick Stickles and Craig Finn, seems destined for a dumpster of his own making but is determined to give people as good a time as possible on the way there.

PUP are at their very best when Babcock turns his microscope of self-awareness into a kaleidoscope of brotherhood for the listener - "I feel like I can’t win / I’m growing up and giving in" he wails, chorused by the voices of the band on ‘Can’t Win’, an impossibly rousing, raging tune that, on listening, creates the opposite meaning for its downbeat lyrics, the message of the song becoming the opposite of its observations as the listener is thrilled, energised and compelled to scream along - complaint-rock oscillating into a celebration of shared achievement.

The same works on 'DVP' - a rolling ruckus in which Babcock calls himself out on his boozing ("Three beers and I’m so messed up") before allowing a friend or partner to comment with the clear, concise and evidently true "She says I drink too much…She says I need to grow up". It’s a miserable, celebratory clutch at the brass ring of a balanced existence that we can all nod to and understand on some level.

Things sour when the loathing is aligned outward - ‘Old Wounds’ for instance is that tired, haggard punk creature, the ex-girlfriend-bating hate parade. "It’s so embarrassing - don’t you know I’m over you" Babcock whines before pulling it back - just a little - with "You want to know if I’m still a prick? Well, I am". Songs like this, as excellently executed by the band as they are, are below their par and something punk rock doesn’t need anymore. Same goes for ‘My Life Is Over And I Couldn’t Be Happier’ which, awesome title and furious instrumentation aside, is another bitter pill - "If I came home right now, what would I find out?". It’s just too crying white boy, too accusatory to really enjoy.

There are more empowering anthems here though, such as ‘Sleep In The Heat’, all surging, reeling guitar lines, “Woah-Woahs”, a handclap breakdown/rebuild and the tragic closing line "You hadn’t been eating, I thought you were sleeping / But you’re not waking up".

The biggest, most blatant and blaring tune here though is ‘Familiar Patterns’ which may read as an indictment of the music industry, but equally could be a condemnation of false friendships. It’s a barrage of blurred sound dotted with viper-like lines - "I fell for the bullshit then I started falling apart" then the overwhelming gang-chant explosion of "They used to say don’t quit your day job / Well guess what?…I never had one’" It typifies the band at their best - acknowledging their own failings, the disappointment of the world around them, shrugging ‘what-can-you-do?’, chugging another beer and diving back into the pit.

In another key entirely we have the odd pairing of album centrepiece ‘The Coast’ and closer ‘Pine Point’. These are poetic, lyrical sojourns into Babcock’s psychogeographic recollections of, in the first instance a lake that "needs to eat just like all living things / and it’s hungriest in the spring" then kisses us off over a Glassjaw power-drive with "No-one can accept the fact the lake gives us life and it takes us back’" Shifting from the gothic to the melancholic on the reflective closer we get a broader picture of American problems through a very personal aspect. "The mine was closed in ’88 and everyone disappeared" he recalls, then noting "Nothing but memories, the abandoned cemetery" and offering the line of the record with "The room you were born in - it was just how you left it". It’s a moment that quietly observes and then moves the listener, an echoing scream away from accusation or self-loathing. It’s beautiful. Though the song may be something of a slow chug n’ fist-pump, somewhat crass in contrast with their usually frantic nature, the singalong close is rousing, beautiful and, strangely, feels totally out of genre.

PUP’s second record is one of moments and contrast - huge musical and lyrical leaps forward, some magical trickery and sleight of hand, a few stumbling mis-steps and finally a huge bright, beaming light offering this budding band a path to follow down which they can flower, grow and hey, maybe one day, not be quite so fucking hard on themselves.