PUP, the interview !

0000 PUP 2025

Exclusive @Songazine.fr, this interview of Stefan, lead singer of the famous and great canadian punk rock band PUP, just before their latest Paris gig !

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One of the things that me smile about the news of your new album coming out was its title: “Who Will Look After the Dogs?” It’s not the first time you’re talking about dogs. “Sleep in the Heat”, right?
Well, “Sleep in the Heat” was actually about a chameleon pet I had. The video we made for “Sleep in the Heat”… it was hard to get it across with a lizard because not everybody finds them adorable. So it was a bit easier to use a dog.

Oops, not starting off very good here!
It’s a very niche fact, that no one should know.

So how important are dogs to you and the other band members?
Really important. We all have dogs. I have one and a half dogs right now.

One and a half?
Yeah, my partner has a dog, so I guess I’m his stepdad now. But yeah we all have dogs, we all love dogs and… they just symbolise something pretty important. You know, calling the album “Who Will Look After the Dogs?”, it’s coming from a lyric about “Not killing yourself, cause you care about your dog too much” and it’s kind of ridiculous but… also I think pretty funny, if you can have a sense of humour about that kind of darkness, which not everybody can, but… I certainly do.

About that. The lyrics on this album… they feel really personal. They’ve always been but even more so on this album I felt. Do you feel the need to sometimes draw the line between what you can or cannot say in a PUP song?
Hum… that’s a good question. I try not to think about that when I’m writing. Because I think that holds back the songs. So I really focus on being present with myself and writing the songs that I want to write and not thinking about “Oh fuck, how is this going to be received?”
I tend to draw more lines in terms of what I talk about in the press or on social media. The one thing that I do draw a line with in the song themselves is when I’m talking about somebody else. I try to respect their privacy, and also do my best to respect the fact there are two sides to every story, I’m conscious of the fact that the world only gets to hear my side. So I try as much as possible to kind of point the finger back at myself, often.

How was it working with Jeff Rosenstock?
Jeff is one of my best friends. We spent an obscene amount of time together, just a wonderful guy, he’s everything that you think he is. He’s just a wonderful, super creative person, cares about his friends and the world, and just has a really good heart.

I was kind of disappointed he did not play the saxophone on your album. Cause he plays that, right?
Yeah, he’s played it live with us before but… no, no saxophone allowed on this album. We had saxophone on our previous album but I put my foot down, no more saxophone.

Why?
The funny answer is I hate the saxophone, I think it sounds like a duck quacking.
The real, honest answer is we were trying to make a record this time that really sounded like the four of us playing live in a room.
This time around, what we wanted to do was not use any studio trickery, magic. We just wanted to capture the energy of the four of us playing in a room. So anything beyond two guitars, bass, drums, vocals… there’s a couple things on the record but not very many. There’s a bit of xylophone, and there’s a couple of programmed things on “Hunger for Death” but we actually play that live. I would say 98% of the record, we can perform it as it sounds on the record.

The production I feel has got much more bite (no pun intended). Was it intentional?
Yeah. Like I said, the whole goal was to capture the energy. I think we have a good energy when the four of us are playing in a room together, even if it’s just a rehearsal. There’s a spark, a magic that comes out of that, that you can’t really fake. Our goal was to capture the most exciting take we could, not worry about if we screw it up, if the energy and excitement is there, then the song if there, we don’t need to fix it. And in the past, we’ve done a lot of “Oooh, I sang out of tune, I’m gonna go fix that”.

When you’re in the studio you can put everything under a magnifying glass. You can look at waveforms on ProTools and see what’s lining up and what’s not. And you can listen on incredible speakers, and hear if there’s something off. What Congleton really dug in on this record was “We’re not doing that”. We’re not looking at waveforms to tell if the music sounds good. We’re not gonna listen on the best speakers in the world. And if it sounds good, if fucking sounds good.

Is there specific you like about French crowds ?
You know what? France has always been amazing for us. When we started coming to Europe, everyone said : “Don’t bother with France”. Ever since we started coming to Europe, Paris has been a highlight for us. The crowds are wonderful. A lot of our earlier material has some “Woo-hooos” in it, people sing along to that, and the shows are really rowdy and energetic, and I’m just grateful to be able to come. This was just a dumb band we started in our basement to play house shows in Toronto, and I’m grateful that we get to come to Paris and Europe so often and play sold-out shows, and have people connect with the music. We’re insanely lucky.

Do you speak any French? « Reservoir » does not count.
(Speaks French) Un petit peu. Il y a une chanson, “Waiting”, qui… a une ligne en français.
I learned it when I was a kid, a lot of it is gone. I was fluent at one point, but that was a long time ago. Je vais essayer de parler français on… le stage ! Sur la scène ! Je vais essayer, mais c’est merde.

Will you play songs from the “This Place Sucks Ass” EP? Have you played those before? I feel like it’s slept on way too much.
Well thank you! We’ve played some of them. We’ve played “Edmonton” quite a bit. We’ve played “Rot” for one tour. And played “Anaphylaxis” maybe… five times? I expected “Rot” to have a bit more excitement around it. It’s hard when it’s an EP because people are just not taking it as seriously. That’s fine, I don’t take other bands’ EPs as seriously as I take the records. It’s easy for great songs to get lost if they’re not on the record. So… probably no songs off that EP tonight.

I remember watching an interview on YouTube where you were explaining the birth of “The Dream Is Over” album. and you explained that the sentence “The dream is over” was what the doctor told you because your vocal chords were in a bad shape. What I found frustrating about this is that I don’t think you really explained how just… well, recovered.

I can happily explain it. We were on tour, I was having these vocal problems from the beginning. At a certain point, my vocal cords hemorrhaged. And so the way your vocal cords make sound if they hit each other like this, and they just couldn’t hit. So I was mute. Like literally couldn’t speak. Not like (raspy voice) “I was raspy”. I went home, I have a specialist there, and I spent a month in complete silence. I could not speak, I could not make a sound, it was very isolating, really tough. You feel really alone in those moments cause… you can’t communicate. A month of that, and there was a couple months where I worked with a speech language pathologist, to re-learn to speak. And then once I could speak again, I worked with a vocal coach who re-taught me to sing. And it was a seven month process. And it was really challenging, because we were hardly making money at the time, but all the money we were making was from touring, and we could not tour. So it was a difficult period for us. But luckily, everything worked out. I can sing again.

Did you change your singing technique?
Sort of. There’s a lot of lifestyle changes. Just the way you treat your body. A little bit of the way I sing. But the kind of music that we play, it’s gonna cause damage. It doesn’t matter, I can’t fake those sounds. It’s just about minimizing the damage and making sure that you warm up before the show, drinking lots of water, making sure you have days off… the first time we came to the UK and Europe, we did 24 shows in 22 days. It’s fucked up. Now, we do 4 shows and we take a day off. So all those things kind of help.

Is there a risk of you relapsing?
I don’t think about it. I’ve had minor problems, but nothing like that again. I believe that a lot of it is a mindset thing.

I wanted to know… How aware are you that the “Tour / DVP” (editor’s note: two fan-favourite songs that are almost played back to back) transition has become something sacred? Have you ever read stuff about it online? It’s hilarious. It’s almost become a meme at this point.
That’s funny. Now, I didn’t know that. I love that. I also try not to read too much about the band. Those two songs are basically one song. Just to fuck with people a couple of times, we’ve played it backwards. It’s very funny.

The aesthetic of “Getting Dumber” ’s music video is… something. Would you like to elaborate on that?
I’m probably the worst person to talk about it, because Zack who plays drums and Nestor who plays bass actually made the whole video. Steve and I were… involved, but that was their brainchild so… they got a really warped funny sense of humour that I love. People don’t really get to experience as much as they get to experience my sense of humour cause it’s in the lyrics. So any chance we have to let them cook, it’s a good time.
We try to pack our videos full of easter eggs. We care a lot about the music videos, even more than most bands. We put a lot of ourselves into them. It’s an opportunity to show a side of our personalities that you maybe don’t get in the music.

Thank you so much!
Thank you for doing this.

Matthieu Vaillant