Jeff Rosenstock & PUP at Palace Theatre (September 3, 2025)

It was a full evening of punk rock in downtown St. Paul as PUP and Jeff Rosenstock crashed the Palace Theatre. 

Ekko Astral was first to the stage. The Washington DC trio formed in 2021 and released their debut full length album Pink Balloons in 2024. Their set up of vocals/bass, guitar/backing vocals, and drums was oh so very punk, starting with a “If you came here in a red Tesla someone set fire to it, you may want to go out to the parking lot”. Jael Holzman rocked bass and had a fun and dark sing-song speaking style that was very well-suited to the ethos. Miri Tyler was all focus on the drums, with head often down, just killing it, while guitarist Liam Hughes was all over his section of the stage, physically throwing himself around. A noisy extended Hughes guitar instrumental eventually had Holzman nearly screaming to end the number. Ekko Astral was flying through their set, stating they were on their last three, “which haven’t been released yet”. Holzman had some choice things to say about the situation in DC and had nothing but vocal support for all the cities currently under or targets for federal “intervention”. A drum heavy number led off those final three songs, and Holzman had her most sung vocals of the set. Ending on “a lamentation”, Ekko Astral closed on a slower musical number (with both other members on back up vocals) that still kept its pop punk sound together.

Side note: The Palace security procedures felt very over the top, with double stamps and a variety of out of the ordinary weirdness. Unsure if this was due to the heavy mix of under 21 year olds, but it was noticeably odd.

Jeff Rosenstock has already been on the scene for twenty years both with a number of bands, such as Bomb the Music Industry!, as well as his solo career. As a solo artist he has five albums, including 2023’s Hellmode. The band (a quintet of vocals/guitar, guitar/keyboards/vocals, bass/vocals, keyboards/guitar/saxophone/vocals, and drums) went straight to work and were riling the crowd up from the jump. Scram! was such a classic Rosenstock song and the band was very excitable. This was a singable punk rock, and boy, was a lot of the audience in full throated sing along mode. Rosenstock, as usual in shorts and tatty t-shirt, was looking happy and pumped up for the show. 

The songs were classic punk; quick, loud and with a lot of physical action from the band. The guitarist on the far right in particular was often a blur as he smashed around that area of stage. But at the center of it all, Rosenstock was the key focus. By the time the band got to Wave Goodnight to Me, the audience was absolutely rocking on the packed main floor. It was hard to keep up with the straight-up onslaught of songs the band was ripping through. Check out the albums Worry and No Dream for recorded examples of the controlled chaos, then multiply that by 5-10 times for the live version. A latter song in the set made me think the drummer might fall apart, given the pace he was being asked to maintain. A slowed down section to a song actually gave Rosenstock a chance to breathe and the rest of the band a brief moment of rest before building back up to an explosive and loud end. A yelled “I’m a f-ing professional” was a hilarious entrance to a very danceable number, with a long audience clapped section. A very loud instrumental intro had all the stage lights flashing and by the time Rosenstock started singing the crowd was primed to be cheering and dancing. By the time the band stopped playing and let the audience sing the “ooh-ooh’s”, they were READY. Finishing on You, in Weird Cities, Rosenstock and band left stage as champions, with a tumultuous set of cheers.

Jeff Rosenstock setlist:

Darkness Records

Leave It to the Sun

Scram!

Festival Song

Staring Out the Window of Your Old Apartment

USA

DOUBT

Pash Rash

Wave Goodnight to Me

HEAD

****SKA

Twinkie

Nausea

LIKED U BETTER

9/10

Novelty Sweater

You, in Weird Cities

Last up was PUP, a Toronto-based punk quartet. They have five albums, most recently 2025’s Who Will Look After the Dogs? The band had all four members singing, alongside two guitars, bass, and drums. I loved this very musical punk band, which could lean into the somewhat screamed vocals, but mostly was very well sung, with some pretty intricate harmonies. That didn’t keep them from the basics of the punk formula, with pretty brutally noisy guitar work and some tremendous volume with the drums. Lead singer Stefan Babcock was a perfect center to the band with a good sense of humor and really, a pretty excellent singer. If you’ve followed my reviews, you know I love good harmonies and high energy drummers, and PUP was dealing both in spades. Zack Mykula’s drum work was brilliant, and with all of the members supporting on backup vocals, that depth shone through repeatedly.

And the crowd? They ate it up. With crowd surfers, moshers, and good ol’ head banging galore, PUP had found an audience that was into the moment. A more guttural screamed song in Free at Last had Babcock leaned well into the microphone just before the flashing stage lights resolved into all four singers, which was a great visual look. (Also, props to the Palace staff who easily and expertly caught all those crowd surfers right at the photo pit and brought them safely down. Pretty fantastic work.) Talking about an album (Morbid Stuff) that couldn’t imagine worse times, but was released in 2019, they played the title song perfectly pitched to the crowd. Getting super gritty and loud, Kids was a more spoken song but was countered well with the guitars and sung chorus. PUP had kept the punk rock sound intact and the evening had been a huge success for a crowd looking for some moments of release. A perfectly titled late set number If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will captured the crude humor of the evening. Just as it looked like they were finishing up, the night continued as Rosenstock (who has the moniker Death Rosenstock when he is a solo performer, to differentiate from his solo band) joined PUP for a sort of encore/exclamation point. Get Dumber, an actual recorded collaboration of a PUP song featuring Rosenstock was a stand out. A wildly entertaining punk evening completed, Jeff Rosenstock and PUP were off to continue their co-headlining tour.

PUP setlist:

No Hope

My Life Is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier

Free at Last

Robot Writes a Live Song

Dark Days

Concrete

Totally Fine

Morbid Stuff

Kids

Hallways

Scorpion Hill

Paranoid

Familiar Patterns

If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will

DVP

Hunger for Death

Sleep in the Heat

Encore with Jeff Rosenstock:

Shut Up

Hey Allison

Get Dumber

We Begged 2 Explode

Reservoir

You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette cover)