The Get Up Kids - There Are Rules
Kansas City pop/punk pioneers The Get Up Kids keep one foot solidly in their emo past while sticking a big toe firmly in a more modern electronic mode on their solid reunion album There Are Rules (January 25). More than a decade after the band's breakout second album - Something to Write Home About -- the Kids keep things short, sharp and invigorating on their new Rules, a ragged, abrasive energy gripping the melodic proceedings with head-bobbing, butt-shaking efficiency. Growing out of rehearsal sessions for a 10 year anniversary for Write Home, the new album is strategically a throwback to the band's early years, a desire, voices frontman Matthew Pryor to, "do everything ourselves like in the beginning."
The Get Up Kids holed up at their Eudora, KS studio with longtime producer Ed Rose in '09, laying down tracks that first appeared last spring on the EP Simple Science. They continued to write and record well into 2010, finishing up with twelve new songs. "This record came together really organically," explains Pryor. "We'd throw out an idea and if it didn't work after 30 minutes we'd scrap it and move on to another one. We all wrote together really spontaneously and then fleshed it out with Ed in the studio." The electro-phonic sheen of lead track "Automatic" is just one highlight, a pummeling 80's New Order synth bass that breaks open space for Pryor's angsty/antsy vocals, a dense mix of squawking guitar riffs and retro new-wave keyboard sweetening.
The Get Up Kids - "Automatic" (from the album There Are Rules)
The Get Up Kids - "Regents Court" (from the album There Are Rules)
Direct Current
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