On Thursday, July 14th, I headed to the Lebreton Flats in the late afternoon to assure I would get a good spot to catch the 6pm performance of Toronto’s PUP. A little late to the game, I was introduced to PUP in early October of last year when a friend insisted I watch their full KEXP performance, which sold me practically halfway through the first song.
After that, I kept their self-titled album in heavy rotation for months while developing an insatiable craving for new material. I finally got what I was looking for early into the new year with the release of their first new single, DVP, which was the exact burst of energy every PUP fan expected from the band. Luckily, I only needed to keep the song on repeat for a few months until May 27th when they released their second album, The Dream Is Over.
So it was with two albums of material etched into my eardrums and brain that I stood eagerly at the Monster Stage, anticipating what I’d been assured would be a high-energy set. When they began to play, anyone unfamiliar with the band may have been thrown off as they started with the calm intro to the first song from The Dream Is Over, If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You Then I Will, which is something of an anti-love song between the members of the band. To the fans in the crowd and myself, we were all anticipating the line “If this tour doesn’t kill you, buddy, I’m on it” which launches the song into fast-paced instrumentals and group chants of “Why can’t we just get along?”
Sticking to the perfect flow of the initial two tracks on the album, they immediately follow This Tour with DVP, to which the already enthralled crowd doubled down on their excitement, shouting along and thrashing together in an appropriately energetic and feel-good mosh pit. It seemed, at least from where I was standing, that the (fairly young) audience were well-versed and dedicated fans, singing along to literally every single song and discussing anecdotes they’d heard about members and tour stories. Every face I saw was plastered with a grin so wide that it threatened to crack the skin.
PHOTO/Danyca MacDonald
Seeing as it’s still a fairly new album, it made sense that the first handful of songs were from The Dream Is Over, but with a relatively small birth of material, it wasn’t too difficult for them to fit in a satisfying amount of content from the S/T album. This included favorites like Mabu, Yukon, Dark Days, finally ending the set with my personal favorite, Reservoir. The overall energy on these songs was high and clearly showed a well-toured band who don’t screw around.
PHOTO/Danyca MacDonald
When they were finished, the crowd demanded more and the band, clearly unsure of the protocol for encores at the fest, looked around for some sign that it was okay until the mics finally turned back on. To this, they announced “This is probably the first encore we’ve ever gotten at a festival” before launching into Weezer’s Pinkerton classic, El Scorcho. This piece of pop-punk gold was a perfect ending to a fantastic set, and I’m sure set in motion hundreds of future anecdotes of “Oh yeah? Well, I saw them play El Scorcho for their first ever festival encore in 2016!”