SOUNDTRACK: PUP-“Free at Last” (2019).
PUP has been on my radar for a while now–I’ve heard amazing things about their live shows, although I always seem to miss them. I was really surprised to find out that this year’s Morbid Stuff was only their 3rd album (for about 100 minutes of total music released), because they’ve been touring forever.
I was very amused to see that at the beginning of the video for this first single they wrote
Prior to its release we wanted to see if anyone would cover our song “Free at last” without hearing it first. We posted the lyrics and a basic chord chart. The rest was up to interpretation.
253 people tried.
The beginning of the video shows many of these interpretations (wonderful variety) before the song properly starts.
The song is a wonderful punk blast of fast chords and a big chanted chorus of “Just ’cause you’re sad again, doesn’t make you special at all.”
What I particularly like is the slow heavy metal sounding opening guitar riff (it seems like it should be a very different song from the way it starts). I also love that Eva Hendricks from Charly Bliss gets a cameo line “Have you been drinking?” although I wish she was a little louder in the song, because it goes by so fast.
I will keep an eye out for the next time PUP comes around. I hope to catch them.
[READ: April 20, 2019] “Dominion”
I really enjoyed this story, the way it unfolded and the way it was broken into relatively discreet sections. I found the ending to be really unsatisfying, though.
The story opens with Michael and his wife talking to their son Paul. Paul is 12 and wants to go hunting with his father. Michael thinks that when he’s 14 he’ll be old enough to go on this annual trip, but that right now he’s still too young.
Paul gives the unexpected argument that in Christian Ethics class, he debated that man has dominion over the animals and that hunting them is okay.
His parents are on the fence about sending him to Catholic school–they both had horror stories about their own upbringing.
The ironic thing is that Michael himself doesn’t really like hunting. He often walked the woods with the dog ostensibly hunting for pheasants. But that was mostly because he liked walking in the woods and fields. The locals though there was something suspicious about you if you didn’t have a gun in your arms doing it. So he carried a shot gun and planned on shooting nothing. Of course, if the dog spooked a bird he would try for it. If he did hit it, it was just more work because he felt compelled to eat it. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 