It’s about unguarded honesty, the figurative blood-lettings of sensitive kids over loud guitars, carving unifying anthems from their most personal moments. Not an excuse for excursions into sentimentality, but a courage, a freedom to share innermost emotions in song, most crucially being unafraid to [I]feel[/I]. A reaction to the hollow black humour of grunge, the dumb rage of metal, the vacant sentimentality of pop, this is emo-core, a nebulous smattering of groups who value the passion above all.
Kansas City quintet The Get Up Kids are onto their second LP now, an opus of buzzing popcore, heartfelt vocals and confessions. Imagine Minor Threat‘s fearsome convictions with the politics excised and the velocity reduced, and you have an idea of the intensity of this record. If the lyrics sometimes seem a little clumsy or overwrought, that’s all part of the package. Unlike contemporaries The Dismemberment Plan, who brilliantly employ bizarre post-sci-fi narratives to refract their lyrical concerns, The Get Up Kids are decidedly WYSIWYG.
Across these tracks breathes a vitally alive spirit, from the dash of ‘Action Action’, through the ecstatic ‘Red Letter Day’, to the yearning ‘Valentine’ (Matt Pryor singing, “The constants aren’t so constant any more” with maximum pathos). Their hearts might be on their sleeves, but The Get Up Kids‘ tailoring is [I]sumptuous[/I].