This Place Sucks Ass - EP

Toronto punk quartet PUP have never been fans of subtlety, and on this six-song EP, they chart new extremes in impatience and impudence: “Why disguise my bad intentions, I got nothing to hide,” Stefan Babcock seethes during the opening seconds of This Place Sucks Ass, and for the next 17 minutes, he unloads on everything that’s pissing him off, be it his allergies (the double-timed circle-pit shanty “Anaphylaxis”) or missing a friend’s funeral because he was on tour (the self-excoriating 70-second salvo “Edmonton”). Though largely composed of leftovers from the sessions for 2019’s Morbid Stuff, This Place Sucks Ass possesses both the under-the-gun energy and loose informality of an afternoon in-store session in the back of a grungy record shop, complete with a surprise cover. In this case, said cover is a roughed-up but reverential version of Grandaddy’s 1997 indie-rock standard “A.M. 180” that allows PUP’s oft-suppressed melodic graces to shine through.