Pup's previous record, Morbid Stuff, was a career highlight of full-bore melodic punk, aimed ever inward and bearing their trademark blend of oddball wit and manic energy. It was enough to earn the Toronto band a Juno Award and a nomination for the prestigious Polaris Prize. A spate of independent singles, collaborations, and the 2020 EP This Place Sucks Ass, marked their typically prodigious output over the next few years while they considered their next big move. As it turns out, that move involved aiming for the big leagues and signing with Universal Canada. In its construction, The Unraveling of Puptheband is unlike any album they've released before. Recorded during a five-week lockdown at producer Peter Katis' residential Connecticut studio, Unraveling offers a dramatic expansion of Pup's sonic palette, stuffing horns, synths, piano, and other new-to-them adornments atop their already jittery guitar rock platform like a demented wedding cake. Frontman Stefan Babcock filters society's ills and his own self-disgust through the blaring, but always entertaining filter that is his trademark on blown-out cuts like the rousing "Totally Fine" and "Relentless." As on Morbid Stuff, the big melodies continue to soar and the band's collective tension is a palpable thing, consistently celebrated as if they're amazed they've made it through yet another record. The inevitable slickening that often marks a band's major-label debut is deftly sidestepped; Unraveling is, if anything, even messier than their first three independent albums. Part of Universal's advance seems to have bought Babcock a piano, on which he learned just enough to record a trio of shaky interstitial songs ("Four Chords," Pts. 1-3) which imagines "Puptheband" as a corporate entity whose board of directors holds quarterly meetings and votes on matters of whether or not to tune the vocals. Biting the hand that feeds is one of punk's great traditions, and it's a relief to find Pup's shambling spirit unsullied by their present status.
Timothy Monger