PUP’s discography has always looked inward with its criticisms, but Who Will Look After the Dogs? shifts its focus from anxiety over Babcock’s mistakes to the disorienting experience of watching his peers lap him on the milestones track; while his bandmates celebrated marriage and had kids, Babcock’s decade-long relationship imploded. The impulse to indulge somewhat childish reactions weakens two album cuts: “Paranoid” soundtracks a bitter breakup dispute with the riled-up noise-punk format of past PUP songs, losing some of its bite in the retread; and the tongue-in-cheek “Olive Garden,” rife with spite for Christian hypocrisy and the forced expectations of dates, offers dissonant vocal harmonies and a sloshed chorus, a queasy enough combo to make even endless garlic breadsticks unappetizing. Both offer the pained awkwardness of a preteen growth spurt.
When PUP prioritize forward momentum, both in music and lyrics, their songs take off with ease, even if it means leaving behind the party vibes they’re adored for. “When one door closes, it might never open/There might be no other doors,” Babcock frets in “Hallways,” one of the album’s most deceptively optimistic tracks. A bright guitar melody steers him away from pessimism and towards a sliver of perseverance: the reminder that your dog needs you, from which the album takes its title. On upbeat earworms like “Concrete” and “Cruel,” Babcock learns how to be the bigger person and how to part ways with whatever drains you. Fans may rally around Babcock’s self-deprecating tirades of the past, but hearing him embrace self-improvement, however much he downplays it, has a special ring to it.
In a first for PUP, the best tracks on their album are slow songs and mid-tempo romps, which bolster Who Will Look After the Dogs? after its rambunctious opening track. Chumak and Mykula’s rhythm section gives “Needed to Hear It” and “Falling Outta Love” lively grooves despite the songs’ low tempos. It’s album closer “Shut Up” that steals the show, though. Plagued by imposter syndrome and suffering wintertime blues, Babcock can’t help contrasting his futile songs with his partner’s masters thesis research; life as a punk band seems cool until you recognize it indulges arrested development. John Congleton’s production turns lo-fi and cold: bare electric guitar strums, ripped straight from the privacy of someone’s bedroom mid-nervous breakdown; gentle cymbal taps and syncopated drumming. Then, the full band joins in, and as their voices intertwine with Babcock’s, scooping him up from the floor, PUP sound closer than just friends or bandmates. They’re in this together for the long haul, growing pains and all.
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