UTG INTERVIEW: PUP @ SXSW

March 28th, 2014

Matthew Leimkuehler

PUP is a potent Canadian punk-rock band poised with a swagger subtly malevolent enough to simultaneously steal your heart and give you a hard punch in the gut. The self-titled debut LP, due out on SideOneDummy Records April 8, is a unique and satisfying listen. Songs like “Reservoir” and “Guilt Trip” are abrasive, engaging and oozing with energy, while tracks such as “Mabu” and “Never Try” are light and clever, with strong melodic backbones. The debut effort from PUP is a marvelous record — an album full of depth and passion — a set of songs packed and ready to make waves in the alternative scene world-wide.

Under The Gun had the pleasure of sitting down with guitarist and backing vocalist Steve Sladkowski at SXSW to chat about the band’s upcoming release, their recent tour in the UK, and much more.

UTG: Thanks for the time today, man. When did you guys get into Austin?

SS: We got in on Tuesday. We had like a weird run-in with a hotel. Basically, a guy tried to charge our credit card before we got there, which is not normal. Well, we roll in and they gave away our reservation. We drove all day from Phoenix, like 15 or 20 hours, and we got there at three in the morning, and all we wanted to do was go to bed. And this dude was just like, “your credit card was not accepted and uhhh we gave away your rooms,” and basically was like, “get the fuck outta here.” He was such an asshole. We’re like. “whoa, dude, what?! What are you talking about? Let’s work this out,” and trying to just be super civil. He implied that he might have a gun and said he knew Krav Maga, and then he was just like, “get the fuck off the property or I’m calling the cops,” — and obviously you don’t find hotels in Austin this week — so that night we just slept in the van after this shitty guy threatened us. So, fuck America’s Best Value Inn Austin, basically is what I’m saying [laughs].

UTG [laughs] Well I’m glad you guys eventually found a place. Are you glad to be here at least?

SS: Yeah, it’s amazing. That was kind of a shitty experience to start; but Austin has been amazing. It’s super cool just to be here and see bands we’ve never seen before or just to experience new stuff and seeing new bands. It’s great, man. It’s everything that people have told us about and so much more, which sounds super cheesy — but it’s been super cool.

UTG: Cool, cool. So you guys got picked up by SideOneDummy, how has the transition been?

SS: Amazing, man, amazing. We put the record out ourselves in Canada not really expecting anything and SideOne came to us super enthusiastically saying they listen to the record all the time in the office and saying they really wanted to work with us and put it out. They came and saw us in New York at CMJ and were like, “let’s do this thing,” and we were like, “holy fuck…yeah!” And it’s so cool just to be with a label that we all grew up on. We grew up listening to Anti-Flag and all those bands that were putting out music on SideOne, like Gogol Bordello, you know what I mean? Like, to have it now where they’re like, “alright, you guys are next, let’s do this thing,” it’s just super cool, man. To me, people who are enthusiastic give you confidence. It’s energizing, and that’s important.

UTG: That’s great to hear. You guys just got back from the UK, how was the run?

SS: The UK was super cool, man. People there are really still into punk-rock and guitar music. It doesn’t feel like it’s a niche music sometimes like it does here, you know what I mean? It’s not like in-vogue because you don’t have people standing around, looking bored and playing synthesizers. We were in the UK and in Europe and we got to see a bunch of cool cities. We got really fucked up in Glasgow. Glasgow was a crazy city, man. We toured with this super cool band from the UK called Slaves. It’s nice, man. Touring is amazing because it’s the best way to see the world. The fact that we get to go and meet people and see cities and play…it can be a whirlwind sometimes because you don’t get to do the typical tourist thing, but it’s really nice to just show up and play shows and meet people and get in touch with the local scene. We got to do that in the UK. We got to learn about the scenes there and meet a bunch of cool bands.

UTG: So you produced your record live, in-studio with Dave Schiffman (Thrice, Trash Talk). What was this like?

SS: Oh, man. If we had to shoot for the moon and choose our favorite producer, he’s who we would choose. Dave Schiffman’s done so much, so many records we love, like The Mars Volta and The Bronx and all kinds of stuff. Our manager sent him an email and he was into it so that’s when we knew that this was something that we could make happen. Dave was amazing, man. He was like, “we’re not making a studio record. We’re not making a cute, poppy record.” That’s not to say we shy away from pop music, because we love pop music, but we also like punk rock. He told us we were going to do it off the floor and that was was going to be raw and gritty and that we were going to leave in mistakes and we were going to do as many single takes as possible. It was great, man. He just has huge ears. He’s an amazing engineer, too. We started calling him Jedi because the stuff he would do was crazy. He came up to Toronto and we hung out and went out to Montreal to make the record and it was a really amazing experience.

UTG: The self-titled record is something that speaks for itself when you hear it. Instead of a detailed description of the record, how about this — if you could describe your band’s new record in five words or less, what would you say?

SS: Different-sounding energetic clusterfuck.

UTG: You nailed it. What’s your favorite new song to play live?

SS: We tend to play a lot of up-tempo stuff but one of the big ones for us that we felt we nailed on the record was the one slow tune–it’s called “Yukon.” It’s about a camping trip our singer Stefan took a few years back. It’s a lot longer than most our songs and kind of dirge and slow and groovy and we were able to do some nifty shit with it in the studio. And then there’s this song called “Factories,” which is the closest we got to a studio track on the record. It’s a murder ballad. It tells a story of lovers where one cheats on the other and it’s a story of revenge that ultimately ends in death; but then the person gets caught and hung. It’s really crazy and it’s a weird song — it’s the last song we wrote before we made the record and it’s cool and weird and I really like the story and imagery.

UTG: That’s wild. It sounds like, sonically, there’s both ends of the spectrum within the live tracking on the record.

SS: Yeah, that’s kind of what we go for, man. We don’t do one thing. It’s weird to say, but we try and just serve songs and melody. We listen to so many songs and so much different music that we don’t need to be like, “We are just a punk rock band or we’re just a garage-rock band or just an indie rock band,” because no one listens to music that way. I listen to tons of stuff and all the guys in our band listen to tons of stuff. You learn from all this music and listening to it and figuring things out and we just try to incorporate anything that works. Ultimately, you can do anything you want with a song as long as you don’t obscure it. We just listen to new music and try not to get too comfortable.

UTG: That’s a great outlook. What’s the rest of the year look like?

SS: We chill in April for a bit, which is nice. We’re going to continue writing the new record, which we’ve already started doing and then we fly to the UK in early May and then we’ll be back in the States after that in June and July. We’re just going to keep playing — keep playing shows and keep meeting people and keep hangin’.