Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, the co-headlining tour between Canada’s PUP and not-Canada’s Jeff Rosenstock went from amazing to perfection with the addition of Ekko Astral, a Washington, DC-based trio who made and impressive debut in 2024 with Pink Balloons, which we mentioned here in our year-end roundup. From its first to last moments, it’s the quintessential punk show – Ekko Astral starting things off hot, quickly winning over the crowd and then dividing the throng in two. They’ve renamed the infamous “Wall of Death” mosh technique to “the Wall of Coming Together”, which is both well-matched to the tone of the evening – more focused on mending rather than breaking – but also still quite correct in the literal sense. From behind the soundboard it’s amazing to see the gap close, silhouettes of people red-rovering into each other until the horizon is once again all shadow.
Ekko also remind everyone of the universal pit rules: “If someone falls, Pick. Them. Up!” And not content with only three cool bands on the bill, they bring on local mod-punks Perennial (in matching outfits, as ever) to sing one of their closing songs, aptly titled ‘We’re All Going to the Capitol Riot’. Not only is the band from DC, singer Jael Holzman worked as a reporter for many years before taking to music – she takes care to mention that the song is very much not instructional, or a call to action.
With the crowd frothed up and the basic ethics of the night established, Rosenstock and band take the stage – in happy news, it’s Birthday Eve for noted Balatro aficionado and bassist John DeDomenici, and he’s as animated as I’ve ever seen, perching on the edge of his monitor wedge and bouncing up and down during songs. Whether downtempo or up, nearly all of Rosenstock’s songs have a quality that makes them irresistible to singing along, and they come out of the gate swinging with ‘Leave It in the Sun’. Rosenstock’s history in music is lengthy, steeped in punk and ska, and you can trace his work back and back through bands like Bomb the Music Industry! – a task made easier by the availability of nearly all his music, for free, through Quote Unquote Records.
Post-’LIKED U BETTER’, he stops and simply declares, “This is fucking sick.” You can hear the smile in his voice – Boston and its environs have always shown up in a big way for Jeff and his bands; it’s a city where the punks don’t really want purity or minimalism, and really resonate with the frantic, positive, happy chaos the band brings to bear. (See: the meme airhorn they fit somehow into ‘Staring Out the Window at Your Old Apartment’.). ‘DOUBT’ shows off their mastery of tempo, beginning slowly but ending in blast beats.
There’s a treat for longtime fans of Rosenstock as well, resurfacing the “old as hell” ‘Twinkle’ from I Look Like Shit and brandishing his unabashedly-imperfect falsetto. This smashes forward into the evergreen ‘Nausea’ off of We Cool?, an album which itself is turning 10 this year. There’s much to love about this song: the emotional honesty of the lyricism first and foremost, but also what certainly has to be the most famous use of the phrase “egg-white sandwich” in music (right?).
In the relative quiet of the bridge something unexpected and amusing occurs, the hive mind of the crowd deciding to open up a void in the mosh pit that’s been active much of the night. One kid jumps in and does “the worm” along the floor with the kind of abandon only available to the athletic and/or the young, then he cycles out and others take his place in order. But then the song picks back up, and the center of the room is a swirling circle once again. Between that, the double-time of ‘Pash Rash’, and the ska-ified staccato refrain of ‘Beating My Head Against a Wall’, the whole night at this point is so ecstatic that it’s almost possible to forget that there’s an entire PUP set yet to come.
Prefacing a brief solo acoustic section of the evening, Rosenstock once again reflects on his bands’ history in the Boston area, in particular shouting out The Sinclair in Cambridge, dedicating the next song, a Bomb the Music Industry! tune, to them and anyone else who’s watched the band climb to great heights over the years. “I’m not being fickle, just realistic!” the crowd shouts back to him, and by the end of the song the rest of the band have rejoined, taking the acoustic throwback into the synthy thump of ‘Festival Song’. Jeff’s lyrics more calmly cascade down the scales of ‘9/10’, and his set comes to its conclusion with the emotional apex of ‘You, in Weird Cities’. It ever remains one of their best songs, with an elastic, closing refrain, all of it evoking the way that people can leave such an indelible footprint on your life by the music they bring into your life, or leave behind.
But did I mention there’s still an entire PUP set still to come?
Rosenstock’s longtime trademark flag -a rainbow version of the American flag with the stars replaced by “666” ensconced in marijuana leaves, naturally – is soon covered by PUP’s, which bears the cover of their latest album, Who Will Look After the Dogs? There’s a minimally-rendered canine hanging out the back passenger-side seat of the car on the cover, and on closer inspection there’s another one behind the wheel. The Canadians enter to a Creed song, which turns off just after baiting the crowd into a sing-along. Frontman Stefan Babcock has some supplemental guidance for the crowd: “Go off… but exercise empathy.” Seems reasonable.
PUP have only gotten more bold with their songwriting through the years, and opener ‘Hunger for Death’ is one of their most unique stylistic turns. It swings unhurriedly, a good pace for a lead-in to the set, but Babcock’s lyrics are at their most nihilistic and self-effacing. ‘My Life Is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier’ somehow sounds slightly more optimistic by comparison. Like Rosenstock, Babcock catapults himself around the stage at times in short hops – they’re not rockstar moves or anything, though Babcock does get some air at times – it’s more just the acts of people who can’t contain the excitement the music sends coursing through them, just like their crowd.
“The world fucking sucks,” Babcock says at one point early on – but the vibes in here are undeniably good. Again mirroring the audience, it’s evident the band cherishes the opportunity to come into spaces like this, little pockets of relief that can sustain a good time, if only for a little while. There’s opportunity to come together even around the most tragic of things, and ‘Sleep in the Heat’ is one such example, memorializing Babcock’s late chameleon. Its choruses conclude with different five-part vocal bolts to the heart, and Babcock lifts the microphone, stand and all, dangling it over the front rows to catch their voices.
PUP have a few guests throughout the evening, including DeDomenici for the next song, where Babcock takes the opportunity afforded by the extra pair of hands to just sing. The two share a big hug at the end of the tune, but it’s not the last time they’ll see each other for the night.
The third quarter of their set belongs mostly to Morbid Stuff, and the last bit revisits their arguably-perfect sophomore album, The Dream Is Over. “Enough having fun, here’s some sad shit,” is how he introduces ‘Scorpion Hill’ from the former; it may start slow, but that’s hardly a deterrent, and the endless conveyor belt of crowd-surfers continues to send people skyward, the silhouettes of their shoes the only sign of their nearly-inverted selves as they progress towards the lights of the stage. Prior to ‘If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will’, Babcock clarifies: it’s “a song I usually connect with, but in this moment I don’t connect with.” It merges as always into ‘DVP’, which has another classic, five-syllable stinger accented by Zack Mykula’s drum hits. And what a tour it is – it’s no secret by this point, but the post-encore break period sees yet another flag hoisted at the rear of the stage which simply reads: “DOUBLE BAND”.
Did I mention there’s actually more Jeff Rosenstock songs yet to come? No? Well, there is. The entirety of both bands take the stage for an encore that sees them alternating songs from each’s discography, including Jeff’s ‘Hey Allison!’ and PUP’s ‘Reservoir’. Rosenstock has acquired some kind of black helmet, and Babcock twice grabs onto Jeff’s back to get carted around the stage, the instrumental aspect for the set more than handled by the other players. And as if to bring things full-circle on the night, there’s one final surprise: the return of Ekko Astral to perform a cover of Alanis Morrissette’s ‘You Oughta Know’, one last salvo of dopamine firing out into the night at the tail end of the most thoroughly-packed processions of good music the Boston area has seen this year.
Babcock may call himself a “pessimistic motherfucker, and songs like ‘Hallways’ may lay bare moments of such desperation that concern for a pet ends up being the last buoy to cling to in a pitch-dark ocean of loss. But much like he’s not itching to find a power drill on this tour, these “stupid little songs” as he puts them paradoxically create a place to escape the strife that inspired them. It’s a common theme in the music made by all three bands, and something I’ve admittedly pointed out no shortage of times in writing – but that power is also a rare thing that never ceases to be relevant – especially when the world fucking sucks.
Photos and words by Collin Heroux