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As a solitary dude, all my life I have relied on music to connect with the world at large, to feel that my feelings weren’t that unique or detached from the rest of humanity. Over the years, I’ve returned to certain albums that have spoken to me in ways that can’t be fully put into words. I love discovering new albums, and perhaps that’s also the case for whoever is reading these words, so I’ll spend some of my limited time on Earth sharing some specifics about the albums that have marked me, and that in many ways changed me.

Today’s album is Morbid Stuff, by the indie-punk band PUP. It has accompanied me through plenty of shit ever since it came out in 2019. Hard for me to compare this album to any other, as I rarely listen to punk, but this band’s frontman captures a perfect blend of disappointment, bitterness, self-disdain and melancholy that resonates very well with me. Without further ado:

“Morbid Stuff”

A song about regret and melancholy. I don’t have the specific details of what the songwriter is talking about, but I picture a female friend or girlfriend of the songwriter trying to make her way in the art scene, only to do something terrible that caused her to disappear from the picture and from the songwriter’s life. Poignant in a raw way.

I was bored as fuck
Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff
Like if anyone I’ve slept with is dead and I got stuck
On death and dying and obsessive thoughts that won’t let up
It makes me feel like I’m about to throw up

I was getting high in the van in St. Catharines
While you were rubbing elbows in the art scene
And back in the city I was on a tear
High-fiving every shithead on Queen Street
Passed out on the bus ride
I got home in the morning at a quarter to ten
Everybody was sleeping in
Mom and dad were smoking weed in the attic again
I said

I don’t know what you want me to say
Stood by watching as your world went up in flames
When you’ve tried everything, but the feeling stays the same
You had it all, you pissed it away

I don’t know what you want me to say
‘Cause back in the city I was on a tear
You had it all, you pissed it away
Back in the city without a care

I still dream about you time and time again
Well I’ve been sleeping in somebody elses bed
And as my body aged, the feeling never did

“Kids”

A lovely tale of rage, bitterness and nihilism. Of doing your best despite the demons that drag you down, only to realize that nothing will work, that you might as well have surrendered to your most self-destructive urges. But at the end of the day, the songwriter gets to return to his girl, which doesn’t solve any issues in the rest of his life, but at least feels nice.

Just like the kids
I’ve been navigating my way
Through the mind-numbing reality of a godless existence
Which, at this point in my hollow and vapid life
Has erased what little ambition I’ve got left
And I’ve embraced the calamity
With a detachment and a passive disinterest
Livin’ out the back of my ’97 Camry
Wonderin’ how the hell I got myself into this

I guess it doesn’t matter anyway
I don’t care about nothin’ but you
I guess it doesn’t matter anyway
‘Cause I don’t care about nothin’
I don’t care about nothin’ but you
No, I don’t care about nothin’

She said, “I’m sick of it all
Your little games are gettin’ old
Your little songs are getting way too literal
How about some goddamn subtlety for a change?”
She said, “I feel like I’ve come untethered
In a room without walls
I’m driftin’ on a dark and empty sea of nothin’
It doesn’t feel bad, it feels like nothin’ at all”

And I had it maxed out
I had a feelin’, oh oh-oh-oh
Nothin’ is workin’
And everything’s bleedin’, oh oh-oh-oh
I shoulda tapped out
Given into my demons, oh oh-oh-oh

It’s alright, it’s just a flesh wound
You said you never saw it comin’
I’m pretty happy lyin’ here with you
It’s pretty good to feel somethin’

“See You at Your Funeral”

My favorite song of the album. It captures very well the pained bitterness of coming across someone you used to love but that broke your heart. You want to know what’s been going on with her, but you know you shouldn’t. You tell yourself that you want her to be happy despite what she put you through, but you don’t truly want that. And above all, you wish everything would end in a rageful fire that would sweep away your pain.

The days blur into one, and I float around the edge of them
Searching for something that’ll make me feel alive again
These past few weeks in a hell of my own creation
I try vegan food
I take up meditation

I hope you’re doing fine on your own
‘Cause after everything we’ve been through
You better hope you’ll find someone
And you’ll try
But you won’t
‘Cause after everything we’ve been through
Oh baby, I wanna know

What you were thinking when you saw me in the produce section
Buying organic foods
Making healthy selections
I asked you how you’ve been, not that it’s any of my business
But you know me, I’ve always been a little masochistic

I hope somehow, I never see you again
And if I do, it’s at your funeral, or better yet
I hope the world explodes
I hope that we all die
We can watch the highlights in hell
I hope they’re televised

“Scorpion Hill”

The devastating tale of a working-class father who can’t stay afloat no matter what he does. Dragged down by his own demons and by this harsh, unforgiving reality, it paints an increasingly grim picture, depicting his struggles with maintaining a relationship with his romantic partner as well as his son, until it wallops you with the final lines: “She said: I found the gun, it was buried beneath / Piles of clothes in the room where your son sleeps / And I can’t pretend to know how this will end.”

Up on Scorpion Hill watching life
Passing me by in the pale moonlight
And I sat there forever, three sheets to the wind
It’s not helping my case, the state that I’m in
But it’s not how they told you
My intentions were good
I was just bursting apart like the end of the arc
Holding on to whatever I could

A square of light moves its way through the empty room
Across the stained yellow carpet
Like a ghost of myself in the afternoon
Haunting my basement apartment
I looked in to the mirror
Hanging behind my door
The glass was cracked and the man staring back
He don’t look like me anymore
And if the world is gonna burn
Everyone should get a turn to light it up

Down and out, I’ve been on the rocks
I’ve been having some pretty dark thoughts
Yeah, I like them a lot

Time and time again, well I’ve tried and failed
To get my act together
And I’ll admit lately things really went off the rails
I know that you deserve better
But in the morning, as I was boarding
The commuter train to work
The boss was calling, he said: “There’s been cutbacks and
I’m sorry you’re the first”
And If I can’t support the two of us
How can I support a third?

And I’m on the brink
Fallin’ deep into debt
Fallin’ deep into drink
I can drown those regrets
I don’t have to think

Now I’m working the night shift
Asleep at the wheel
I was bursting apart like a flame from a spark
Thinkin ‘Jesus, this can’t be for real’

My sweat soaked mattress
Corner of the room
Cigarettes and Matches
In the fading afternoon
And a picture my kid, ya he’s smiling
It’s the first day of school

She said: I found the gun, it was buried beneath
Piles of clothes in the room where your son sleeps
And I can’t pretend to know how this will end