Photos by Katrina Wong Shue
Hometown punk heroes Pup returned home for the first of two sold out shows at the Danforth Music Hall in support of their acclaimed third album, Morbid Stuff.
The night had all the ingredients for a great Friday night. Sun and heat finally made a Friday night appearance in the city, in what seemed like an eternity away. Everyone slipped into something more comfortable right across the city and made their way to a patio or concert venue. Also elevating the mood was game 4 of the NBA finals where the Toronto Raptors would end up taking a 3-1 lead in their historic run.
But first, four musical hometown boys hit the stage and delivered a party that everyone appeared to get behind. Pup opened their hour long set with “Free At Last” from Morbid Stuff. And from those opening notes, the crowd was in this band’s hands, singing, drinking and dancing as comfortably to the new songs as tracks from their sophomore breakthrough, The Dream Is Over.
The sound in the venue was pretty muffled throughout the first half of the show but that didn’t stop anyone from getting their Friday night on. The band offered up a pretty even offering of tracks from Morbid Stuff and The Dream is Over, even offering up a few tracks from their eponymous debut.
Highlights were “Kids”, “Morbid Stuff” and even doing a pretty good job for their first run through “See You At Your Funeral” despite thinking they were going to mess it up.
The band took some time to express joy and gratitude for the hometown love, the crowd did also erupt into a “Let’s Go Raptors” chant which seemed to really elevate the party, or it was the fact that they closed their set with a ferocious “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” and “DVP” before forgoing the encore to close out with “Scorpion Hill”.
So with that frenzied happiness, roughly 1500 fans left the Music Hall happy and ready to catch the last quarter of the basketball game. And for anyone at that Pup show, the feeling was they won last night – twice!
So if you missed the party, the boys return for their biggest headlining hometown show when they headline Echo Beach and that should be one epic beach party.
Be sure to catch PUP at Echo Beach July 21st, tickets are available here
