Rico Nasty backstage at Knitting Factory, 2018.(Johnny Nunez / Getty)
PUP is back. The Canadian punk rockers—whose name stands for Pathetic Use of Potential, a sentiment I can get behind—just put out their fifth studio album, evocatively titled Who Will Look After the Dogs? And as the title implies, it’s about relationships—the bad ones. Those love affairs that curdle, those forms of dislike you can only really cultivate when you know someone a little too well.
PUP has always been forthright regarding what their albums are about—from their breakout second album, The Dream Is Over, to their punk-rock classic Morbid Stuff. And that’s the case here, too. The first verse of this blistering 35-minute record is: “Staring into the void now / You’re going down with the ship / You’re taking me with you / I don’t need to resist, it’s just what it is.” What’s not to like?
It’s been just over six years since PUP cemented their place in the punk-rock firmament with Morbid Stuff. Before PUP, they were Topanga—named after the character from Boy Meets World, their collective first middle-school crush—and put out two EPs that sound a lot like proto-PUP. They’re a little less heavy, but the trademark catchy hooks and frenetic energy are already coming into focus. In 2013, they became PUP, released their first, eponymous album, and then toured for hundreds of dates. That led to 2016’s, The Dream Is Over, which brought them some real commercial success, and three years later, Morbid Stuff.
After that came their 2022 full-length, The Unraveling of PUPtheBand, a polished, solid album primarily about dealing with aging, success, and, since they’re still a punk band, angst—the real heady stuff. (A representative chorus: “Lately, I’ve started to feel like I’m slowly dyin’ / And if I’m bein’ real, I don’t even mind / Whether I’m at my worst or I’m totally fine,” off of “Totally Fine.”)
If there’s a common theme threaded through any PUP album, it’s the feeling of feeling bad. They write so precisely about not feeling so great, dressing up those low-grade horrors in power-chorded yelps. Somehow, though, through it all, the music remains fun. And feeling those feelings is even better when you inevitably find yourself singing along.
Who Will Look After the Dogs? continues that grand tradition, though I find it more focused than PUP’s earlier records because of how carefully the band is paying attention to the infinite feelings that can exist between two people. Young love and its losses are still a theme, but the perspective has shifted: Now they’re writing about the travails of young love from the vantage point of old(er) age.
Just about every song has a lived-in specificity; the breakups and makeups feel real, or real enough, and the songs work as an antidote to the gossipy panopticon of social-media dating advice—which has lately been supercharged by how difficult (though “optimized”) the search has become. Dating apps hold the promise of finding the perfect person, or at least the perfect person for you; yet those online connections become totally different in real life. In this way, Who Will Look After the Dogs? can sometimes feel a little like a relic from an earlier time, one far more analog than the age we find ourselves in now. But, hey—hasn’t punk always been a little nostalgic?
And yet the album’s less concerned about explaining the past than it is in reliving it, just enough to hurt. “Fuck everyone on this planet / Except for you, except for you / I’ve been on a rampage / Whatever’s wrong with my heart / Must be wrong with yours too,” Stefan Babcock sings, reedily and beautifully, in “Hunger for Death.” In “Paranoid,” the narrator comes to terms with the relationship he had with a person he used to love: “You weren’t sure of your choices / So you thought you should give me a ring / The good was good, but the bad was better / And that pretty much sums up everything / I don’t know what you wanted or if it was something I could even give / And if I could, I don’t know if I would give it / You sound fine and you’ve seen how I live.”
I might call that “dirtbag poetry,” but that would be wrong or, worse, imprecise. In any event, what matters is how easy it is to tell that PUP is having fun. And that’s what makes their most bitter lyrics sweet enough to go down. In “Hallways,” we get lines like “I’m losing the will to keep dragging on / But I can’t die yet ’cause who will look after the dog?,” and in “Olive Garden” ones like “I’m sorry for what I said / And what else should I say? / If you give me another chance / I’m probably gonna fuck it up anyway.” The music is at once propulsive and tender, less embittered than it is reflective. It is, in other words, just about how it feels to be in those situations. Terrible things can happen at an Olive Garden; so can real tenderness.
PUP made their name on the rock scene with their sophomore album, The Dream Is Over, which bottles up the band’s riotous charm and alchemizes it into something a little more disciplined and narrative-driven. It’s a marvel, in one sense, because second albums are extremely tough to make in the first place. Rare is the one that feels focused, concentrated, and expressive; even if you’ve mastered your sound, pushing it forward artistically is a whole other problem to solve.
There are many reasons for this. As an artist recording your first album, you’ve had years to hone your craft and figure out a sound and you were able to work at your own pace. But then for album No. 2, a record company suddenly expects you to put out something new that’s just as good (or ideally better)—and do it quickly to boot. There’s also a natural wish to experiment, to grow as an artist and not to stagnate by making stuff that comes the easiest. Each of these demands would be a challenge on its own. Taking on all of them at once—successfully!—is exceedingly difficult. A third album might be even harder: It’s where you begin to secure your legacy.
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Rico Nasty has been around for a while now. As the rap world’s resident punk-rock star, she’s put out a string of great singles and mixtapes, and she dropped her debut album in 2020. It brimmed with promise, just like every other successful debut record. Then came Las Ruinas, her second studio outing. It was fairly well received; I personally rocked with the attitude-heavy “Gotsta Get Paid” and “Jungle–Rico Nasty Remix,” her Fred Again collab. Now she’s back with Lethal, her third studio album. It’s a brash, energetic romp that manages to take some interesting sonic risks—though I’m not sure all of them pay off. It’s also Rico’s first album with her new label, Fueled by Ramen, which is best known for its stacked roster of emo bands. That in itself is a thrilling idea; wherever we’re going, she seems to say, I’m driving.
Let’s start with the highs. “On the Low” is a sweet pop song with tart trap snares and a catchy hook; the verses are absolutely filthy, and the contrast just works. “Teethsucker(Yea3x)” is classic Rico, snarling boasts and threats over rock-star guitars —it’s a song for a top-down day in your nearest convertible. “Eat Me!” is wonderfully menacing and cements Rico Nasty’s status as one of rap’s most enjoyable braggarts. “Crash” sounds like a straight rock song—and, more compellingly, it sounds natural on her; I’d listen to a whole album of Rico rock. Also, more tracks like “Smoke Break,” please—it’s a pleasure to hear her yell over a wall of distorted guitars.
Less compelling are songs like “Who Want It” and “You Could Never,” which feel a little rote, even if each is listless in a different way: With “Who Want It,” we get aggression without real menace, and the boasts in “You Could Never” feel like one’s heart isn’t really in them. And while I like the spirit of exploration in “Can’t Win Em All,” it doesn’t really quite fit here.
But as a third album, I think that Lethal is good. And what’s more, I think the fact that Rico Nasty is willing to experiment as much as she does augurs even more success in the future. The worst albums, after all, are the ones that feel like retreads—the ones that seem to be composed exclusively of B-sides from the cutting-room floor. Growing as an artist requires breaking past one’s creative boundaries, which is what Rico Nasty does here. The fact that many of the rock songs here work as well as they do—on a rap album!—is an achievement.
Third albums end up facing all sorts of challenges. They’re where we discover whether an artist has matured and where their career-wide projects begin to come into focus. You don’t get Who Will Look After the Dogs? without Morbid Stuff. Lethal promises a new focus from Rico Nasty, because it’s that rarest third album that works like a debut—a statement of artistic evolution from one of rap’s most inventive rhymers.
Bijan StephenBijan Stephen is a music critic for The Nation. He lives in New York and his other work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Esquire, and elsewhere.