HEADS UP! Both of these tracks I am about to discuss contain content that some readers may find quite sad. Ensure you have some tissues on hand in case of tears, and without further ado, please enjoy the review…
Kindred Spirits
If you gave me a nickel for each song released by a Canadian band about the passing of a beloved pet, I’d probably have way more than just two nickels. However, with just two nickels, I could give you two tracks with the same premise by bands that each call Toronto home and have hit me emotionally in a similar manner.
Sleep in the Heat is a song I’ve been aware of for many years at this point, and I’ve also seen PUP perform it live twice now, with a strong potential for a third at some point in the next few years. TWRP is a more recent fixation, with my older brother solely to blame for it.
I’m not nearly as familiar with their discography. I find their newest album, The Longest Weekend, fun and funky, but it is off of their possibly best album, Together Through Time (still researching that claim), that I found Pets. I have been hit by the same form of sadness by both of these tracks, many years apart from one another, so why don’t we share in that melancholy together whilst I let creative writing flow through my tears…
Sleep in the Heat – PUP
PUP (AKA Topenga and Pathetic Use of Potential) hit us with Sleep in the Heat on their second album, The Dream is Over, earlier on the album than expected. Rolling through If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will, DVP, and then into Doubts, we start to get the gist of what type of music Pup makes. High octane, sometimes vulgar, and brutally honest, Sleep in the Heat takes that energy and redirects it into vulnerability.
At this point in the album or discography, we haven’t been hit by similar candid life snapshots of Scorpion Hill or Shut Up, so Sleep in the Heat comes unexpectedly and unprovoked. As a song, it’s framed in a pretty typical PUP structure. You can quite easily belt it out with whatever singing ability you possess, shoulder-to-shoulder with other fans/strangers, and you can take comfort that everyone else in that venue is doing the same. The only difference, some of those fans/strangers are going to be balling their eyes out while belting out every “wa-a-o-a-o”.
I think what makes Sleep in the Heat hit as hard as it does is that we witness the process of seeking a companion to stave off loneliness, and watching that same companion slowly succumb to illness well before their time. We are presented initially with the joy of finding friendship with a pet dog, and then witnessing the futile attempts to prevent an early death, only exacerbated by a lack of savings. It reaches a crescendo when that dreaded conclusion finally hits us:
You hadn’t been eating, I thought you were sleeping. But, you’re not waking up
Trust The Process
We are witnesses to the entire process of adoption, to degradation of health, to the final passing of the beloved dog, and part of me listens to it and thinks, “maybe the dog will be okay this time”. Sleep in the Heat lets us make an empathetic connection to the singer’s emotional pains and struggles. It forms an emotional buildup and release at the conclusion. I bet that in that venue, at the lyric “you’re not waking up”, the crowd was possibly the loudest it was ever that night.
Pets – TWRP
Shifting gears away from pop-rock, we now arrive at TWRP (AKA Tupper Ware Remix Party, legally distinct from Tupperware, the brand of reliable plastic containers), and their approach to sadness: high-tempo fusion jazz (think Casiopea if you’re as unfamiliar as I am with the genre). I have been binging TWRP albums over the past month or so, digesting how they’ve progressed sonically and enjoying the funky fresh digital-age grooves. One asset they utilize is a “Talkbox”, wielded by vocalist and man of the majestic moustache, Dr. Sung, heavily in their earlier albums to sometimes extreme effect. All that being said, you could probably forgive me for not realizing what Pets is about on first, second, or subsequent listens.
My first tip-off to the content of Pets was the line
Goodbye my sweet friend
I only picked it out in passing, thinking to myself that it is quite the sorrowful sendoff to not a lost lover as typical, but to a companion or close friend. And then, after listening much more closely, Pets hit me in the same way Sleep in the Heat did all those years ago. It’s an ode to a pet (presumably a pet dog) that has since passed away. From the lyrics, we glean that this pet was well-loved in the life of the writer since they can remember, and a cherished member of the family.
Purely Emotional
We don’t have any details of the passing, but rather the writer’s own thoughts and emotions. I can only guess at the circumstances, but it is clear that there’s a void left now that this pet is gone, and from that the songwriting becomes plainer, with much more familiar language. No blurbs of French or digital-age jargon, the only “clever wording” is a rhyme in the chorus about
This ode of sorts is owed to you
which still drips with the sincerity found in the rest of this tribute.
Different Emotions, Same Medium
We now get to the point in the review where these two tracks overlap in their respective Venn-diagram circles. PUP gives us the process of grieving before the subject passes away, and TWRP presents it with reverence and respect, still well after their subject passed. For PUP, the emotional wounds still feel fresh, but TWRP appears to have processed, and all the grieving they possessed has been transformed into a memorial in their hearts.
It feels odd that I’m analyzing more the song that talks less about the specifics of the passing. Pets is less lyrically complicated than Sleep In The Heat, but takes more stewing to see what appreciation they have for the subject. Sleep In The Heat, in contrast, presents its emotions fully and completely up front by letting us embrace their emotions as if they were right there with them. Both are heartfelt, both are sad, but each presents its emotions distinctly, and each songwriter presents them with their strengths.
In Conclusion
Sleep In The Heat is PUP at their most vulnerable, not by telling us exactly what those emotions are, but by letting us as listeners experience the grief firsthand through storytelling.
Pets is a rare moment for TWRP. There is an air of peace and reverence for their subject. To those keen-eared listeners, they offer a tender ode that leaves even those dancing along in tears.
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