Tuesday 9/22: PUP—"Rot"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the Toronto punk band PUP.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the Toronto punk band PUP.
PUP—"Rot"
Eric Bennett:
The new single from PUP doesn’t veer too far from their winning formula. Gang vocals? Check. Self depreciation? Check. Insanely sick riffs and a commanding hook? Check. Anhedonia masked with comedy? Check. That said, “Rot” feels especially potent right now. The attitude Stefan Babcock displays here roundly tells those who push positivity in times of hardship to fuck off. “How’s that for your glass half full?” The second verse criticizes productivity culture, a concept that is always loathsome, but when so much in the world makes life feel bleak, is even more offensive. Babcock’s tone when he sneers, “oh my god the grind is killing me,” feels like a balm to apply every time someone hopes their email finds you well.
Eli Enis:
I like to think of Jeff Rosenstock and PUP as the good cop/bad cop of Trump-era punk rock (yes, fuck all cops but just lend me some allegory leeway here). Last week, Rosenstock, who’s uniquely adept at articulating our era’s nauseating dread while simultaneously mining for a kernel of hope, dropped an EP called 2020 DUMP that began with a song called “DEPT OF FINANCE”. It’s a track about how terrible this year has been, and one section of it is an apology to a friend that he neglected to reach out to in their time of need because he simply didn’t know what to say. It’s a classically great Jeff Rosenstock track because it’s mostly about how shitty and depressing the world is, but it also zooms in on an interpersonal transaction that’s reflective of our collective experience and engages in some earnest introspection. “But I shouldn’t pretend I can be a good friend / If I don’t do it the right way,” he sings.
It’s the sort of atonement that I’d include in the working definition of a Good Person—acknowledging your flaws, genuinely accepting your wrongdoing, and trying to be better going forward. If Jeff Rosenstock represents the 2020 depressed leftist punk at their ideal best, then PUP are our doomer chaos icons for self-loathing, self-destruction, and “Welp, fuck it” nihilism. Over time, their albums have only gotten darker and Babcock’s lyrics have only gotten more revealing about his cyclical despair. Nearly every PUP song on last year’s Morbid Stuff sounded like it could’ve been the last thing they played before Babcock took a swig and swan-dove off a balcony, and “Rot” is another entry in their, “Damn, is this dude OK?” catalog. “The more I'm reckless /
The less I break / The more I care about money / The less I make / The less I care about everything / The better it goes / And the better it gets / The more I lose control.”
In my experience, sometimes I’m feeling like Rosenstock—demoralized by everything around me but kept afloat by the guarantee that “the sun’s gonna rise in the morning / and you have to live anyway”—and other times I just want to fucking “Rot” like PUP. I think both of them serve an important role in my musical diet; shot and chaser, so to speak. But damn, PUP, this is some warm Seagram’s in a solo cup type shit.