The Get Up Kids
Something To Write Home About
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The Get Up Kids
Something To Write Home About
Vagrant, 1999
RiYL: The Promise Ring, Hot Water Music, Jimmy Eat World, Superchunk |
People who like Four Minute Mile seem to really like it, evidenced by the band's live shows, where audiences are known for singing out as many lyrics as possible. The album won seemingly everybody over with a simple and familiar formula -- anthemic indie-rock. The only bad thing about FMM was the shoddy production (shoddy, that is, if you like to distinguish between treble and bass).
Something finds the band under the aegis of Vagrant records, a larger indie label perhaps better suited to produce their albums. And certainly, there is an improvement in terms of production. Unfortunately, I doubt this album will garner the same attention as its predecessor.
This can't be a huge surprise, their last EP was good but unrevealing. The ideas of the last full-length album seemed to hold together rather tenuously (although effectively). The band lost their grip on those edges which belonged to hardcore on their previous albums, and fell into something more like straight-up rock.
Out is the constant repetitive riffing, and in is a new keyboard player (who reminds me disturbingly of David from Beverly Hills, 90210). The result is predictable -- while some of the songs seemed more complete and polished, many have simply lost their edge.
The album opens with the ultimately unconvincing "Holiday", a rocker that fails to capture the energy of their previous efforts, and smacks of trying to. "Ten Minutes" is the exception, the only song that fits the categories: "really rocks" and "good." The songs that don't rock too often sound like a bad Jimmy Eat World knock-off.
A few of the songs have surfaced on other albums, and, unfortunately, they are the best songs on this album (it is worthwhile to note that they are slightly different versions, i.e., with keyboard). All of the songs are pretty decent, and there aren't really any throwaways (as there were on Four Minute Mile). While I normally wouldn't comment on such a thing, for some reason, the packaging is particularly weak, exhibiting an eye-sore of a painting which comprises the entire design scheme. I mention this only because their album art has generally been so well-conceived.
The band also seems to have regressed lyrically -- to such an extent that songs that are otherwise great are nearly ruined by lyrical banality (see "Red Letter Day" -- "We're loyal like brothers / just us vs. all the others / you're the one for me"). But don't give up on the GUK. If this is their worst album, then they are doing something right.
ED COMSTOCK |