Playing their last show of the year at Riot Fest 2023 in Chicago was just not enough for PUP. Something felt like it was missing as if they needed something more intimate, something more indoors, something more… late-night Riot Fest show at Concord Music Hall? Yup, that’s it, that’s the one. Late-night festival shows, whether they are a pre- or after-show event, are a thing of such unrivaled beauty, and what band pairs better with pure, unadulterated midnight chaos than PUP? I’m honestly surprised they haven’t done an entire tour of midnight festival parties. I mean… Could you even imagine? PUP is a band that thinks ahead and plans for being super tired and completely uninterested in a festival aftershow that starts at 1am so they, in the spirit of being so giving to their fans, organized the most epic and legendary midnight Chicago extravaganza that Riot Fest pre-show entertainment has to offer.
Much to my dismay as both an avid concert-goer and concert reviewer, I was unable to be in attendance for PUP’s opener Snotty Nose Rez Kids, a Canadian First Nations hip-hop duo that, according to fellow Canadians PUP, are absolute legends back home, which is why PUP brought them out on this limited tour run to give them the kind of exposure they deserve in the US. If they’re as great as PUP tells me then I’m sure they put on an absolutely stellar performance that I could tell riled the crowd up sufficiently and adequately.
As PUP has been doing for much of their recent tours supporting their 2022 album THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND, they opened up with the one-two-punch of “Four Chords” into “Totally Fine” and I’m not sure if I’m in the minority wanting this or not but I think they should open with those two songs from the rest of time as they set the tone for the rest of the show so perfectly that it’s really hard to argue against them. To even think about opening a PUP show with a quiet, keyboard-focused song would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago but the fact that we’re where we’re at today is so hilariously fitting. Moving into more hard-hitting territory, the boys broke out some classic PUP songs with “Free at Last” and “Dark Days,” which both lent a helping hand in getting the crowd rowdy enough to start pits that would go until the end of the show.
Knowing that they’d be performing in the same city the next day, PUP brought out a few surprises for the more passionate and morbid fans. Before starting “Mabu”, a song off their debut self-titled record apparently about a car that lead singer Stefan Babcock used to own and love, Stefan mentioned that this song has only been played maybe three or four times in the past six years, which caused all of us in the crowd to swoon since who doesn’t love walking away from a concert with some bragging rights concerning rare songs you got to hear. Soon after, they played the often underrated and forgotten “Edmonton” off their 2020 EP This Place Sucks Ass, an EP that was composed mainly of leftovers from their much beloved 2019 album Morbid Stuff. The song was a bit of a mainstay on their setlists in 2022 but has rarely been played live this year so I’m counting it as a fun surprise!
Since the show was so late at night and I’m sure the band wasn’t their most energized selves, there wasn’t too much conversation in between songs but lead singer Stefan Babcock did do his absolute best at keeping the band’s reputation of being one of the funniest, self-deprecating live acts around very much alive. There were a couple of story times dating back to funny moments on past tours and plenty of sardonic intros to songs but I honestly wanted so much more! I know it’s a hot subject matter and I may be in the minority here but I love it when bands take plenty of pauses in between songs to get to know the crowd, tell funny stories, and just goof off a bit. If I wanted to simply listen to a band’s songs that I’m seeing live, I can do that easily through streaming services. What you can’t get through Spotify or Apple Music are the stories and personalities of the band members that really connect you to their music even more sometimes than the music itself!
After a bit of story time around the middle of their set, PUP did a five-song run of cuts from their 2019 album Morbid Stuff playing all the hits we know and love! It’s rare a show goes by without hearing that album’s title track or “Kids” but we mustn't forget about the rager that is “Scorpion Hill” and the underrated “Closure”, two songs that worked just as hard to give the crowd a great time. Closing in on the last couple of songs before their “encore” (enclosed in quotes because they’re very publically outspoken about hating encores but it’s hard to not think of the songs that come after their anti-encore speech every night as being anything but!) the band brought us back to their most recent album with “Waiting” (one of the night’s most crushing songs live and the one instance of Stefan crowd surfing) and PUP’s favorite PUP song, “PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing For Bankruptcy”, a song that they stopped playing recently because they felt like it wasn’t too popular but they brought it back as Stefan said because they just needed to do something for themselves once in a while. Like a big chunk of their fanbase, I’m rather indifferent when it comes to their newest album. It’s quite good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a step down in some regards from their last two albums that were quite literally perfect. However, with that being said, all the songs from THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND sounded brilliant live and so much better than on the record. The production on the last album, albeit very interesting and unique, didn’t do all it could, in my opinion, to make PUP sound as energetic, chaotic, and heavy as they are live. All is to say, the songs sounded amazing live and I walked away from their show last Friday with a newfound respect and love for that album, which I couldn’t be happier about.
Closing their show with the double-fisted chaos ball of fury that is “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” and “DVP” is not an unfamiliar pattern for the band, and by 1am last Saturday morning, there really weren’t any songs left for them to play. There’s such magic in the air when they play these two songs back-to-back that they really made it impossible for me to say any other song, or run of songs, in the setlist topped them; the energy and fun wafting through the air from these songs is simply unmatched.
I’m sad that this after/preshow and their set at Riot Fest mark the end of 2023 for PUP but I’m so thrilled I at least got to catch them at a somewhat smaller venue than the ones they’re playing more and more these days as it was really as fun as I wanted and needed it to be. I can’t wait to catch them on the road next time and I can only selfishly hope and pray they won’t be an Aragon-sized band the next time they hit up Chicago.
All photos by Lorenzo Zenitsky