Have you ever seen a mosh pit in an Olive Garden? I have — and it's all thanks to PUP, who made over Blood Brothers Brewing's Sound Garage venue as a location of the Italian-American restaurant chain in celebration of "Olive Garden," the final pre-release single from the band's fifth album, Who Will Look After the Dogs?
It was a slightly curious choice for a Toronto band's hometown album release party, given that there are only a small handful of Olive Garden locations in Canada, and none of them are in Ontario. I've never been to an Olive Garden, although I'm familiar with the cliché that it's where you take your partner to break up with them, which I'm guessing is where PUP's snarky interest in the restaurant comes from.
Even those unfamiliar with Olive Garden quickly got the vibe: walking into the Sound Garage (where fans at the front of the long line on Geary Avenue had been waiting since 8 a.m.), attendees were given a paper bib, and there were tacky paper placemats on every surface. Right, right, so it's a two-star East Side Mario's type place — got it.
The members of PUP were dressed as servers in all-white, wearing their crisply pressed shirts buttoned up uncomfortably high. With Who Will Look After the Dogs? playing over the PA system, the band members served free Italian food out of catering containers for fans in a cramped line that snaked around the venue. Steve Sladkowski politely poured some burrata remnants on top of my red-sauce spaghetti, and drummer Zack Mykula handed me a piece of garlic bread with a smile.
After the food was cleared away, the couple-hundred fans crammed toward the front for PUP, who emerged still dressed as servers. They had paper bibs tied around the mic stands, a trans flag draped over the guitar amp, and a giant ginger cat on Mykula's kick drumhead.
Self-deprecating as always, frontman Stefan Babcock quickly explained that they had rehearsed for the first time in months just the day before — but if they were rusty, they didn't show it, as they played a half-dozen cuts from Look After the Dogs with characteristic abandon, including the pop-friendly breakup banger "Hallways," the full-throttle rager "Paranoid," the grungy "Concrete," and the nihilistically waltzing "Hunger for Death" (which is admittedly not my favourite on the album, but sounded fantastic live, particularly when Babcock hollered, "Fuck everyone in this venue / Especially me").
Compared to the sonic diversity of 2022's THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND, this was classic, old-school PUP — all shout-along choruses, pummelling punk rhythms, and some wild fretboard wizardry from Sladkowski. As good as it was, the energy in the room picked up even more when they tore into a selection of old songs that the fans knew, with everyone in the room screaming along to "Dark Days" and "DVP." Sladkowski quipped that the fans should "open this pit up," and even though I think he was mostly joking, the fans obliged, the moshers briefly opening up a circle pit in the middle of the Olive Garden.
PUP apparently hadn't practiced any of these older songs, but they've played them so many times that they went off without a hitch. They even invited a chaos element into the night by welcoming a couple of fans on stage for impromptu guest appearances; someone named Ryan took lead screaming duties on "Reservoir," and a fan named Isaiah played rhythm guitar on "Kids," and both of them nailed it. Babcock then kicked the frenzy into high gear by crowd surfing mid-song, still playing guitar the whole way through.
PUP will be playing six hometown shows at increasingly large venues this summer, from a house show all the way up to History. They love to sing about pain and misery, and they're quick with a joke at their own expense — but, as this Olive Garden-themed show proved, their cynicism never comes at the expense of commitment to the bit (and a good time).