When the Get Up Kids released a new EP in early 2010, it was the first new music we had heard from them in six years. It made sense; the band had broken up at the tail of their 2005 tour for final album Guilt Show, following a mess of shifting priorities and tension.
"We were really sick of each other," vocalist/guitarist Matt Pryor told Exclaim! in a recent interview. "The closest thing I can liken it to is if you're in a long relationship with someone and they break up with you, and you're like 'I can never see that person again for the rest of my life,' and then three years later, you run into them at a party and realize, 'oh, I'm actually not mad at you anymore.'"
And three years was all it took. In late 2008, the band started to discuss playing a couple of festival shows. As a warm-up, they played a secret reunion show in their hometown of Kansas City, KS, a show that preceded the re-release of and tour to support the band's seminal 1999 album Something to Write Home About. Now, though, Pryor admits that the reissue was simply a means to their intended end.
"We could have just done a tour. We didn't have to spend a bunch of money putting that sort of thing together," he says. "I'm not trying to sound like I'm negative about the whole reissue process. If I can only put out one album a year, it's much more enjoyable for me as an artist to put out something that is fresh than to rehash old stuff."
Instead of continuing with their planned EP series, a full-length was made. Forgoing their traditional album process for an entirely collaborative, self-released one, the Get Up Kids' upcoming LP proper, There Are Rules, is a brash, melodic offering that's experimental in single "Shatter Your Lungs" and "Automatic," and familiar in the urgent pop-bred racket of "Pararelevant." It's the sound of a band moving forward, an observation that Pryor says has been pretty common.
"My buddy Chris Conley from Saves the Day said, 'Dude, it sounds like you guys -- from the future,'" he laughs, but his own take is a little more grounded. "It's definitely the sound of a band that is very comfortable playing what we like and we really don't give a shit if anyone likes it or not."
Though Pryor enjoys the non-committal stress this time around and says there are no current plans beyond the upcoming tour -- which includes one Canadian date on March 8 in Toronto -- he does have his eyes on another potential nostalgia project.
"Next year will be the 15-year [anniversary] of our first record, and I want to do a tour of just playing that record... Maybe we'll do the Four Minute Mile live record or something. I just don't know if I can get everyone to go along with it. They're just as weird about rehashing old crap as I am. But we'll see."
There Are Rules is due via the band's own Quality Hill Records on Tuesday (January 25). You can see all their North American tour dates below.
Tour dates:
1/25 Tempe, AZ - Clubhouse ^
1/26 San Diego, CA - House Of Blues ^
1/27 West Hollywood, CA - The Troubadour ^
1/28 Pomona, CA - The Glass House ^
1/29 San Francisco, CA - Slim's ^
1/30 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill ^
2/1 Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater ^
2/2 Seattle, WA - Neumo's ^
2/3 Seattle, WA - The Knitting Factory ^
2/4 Salt Lake City, UT - Club Sound ^
2/5 Denver, CO - Marquis Theater ^
2/23 Orlando, FL - The Social #
2/24 Orlando, FL - The Social #
2/25 St.Petersburg, FL - State Theatre #
2/26 Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club #
2/27 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle #
3/1 Washington, DC - The Black Cat #
3/2 New York, NY - Webster Hall #
3/3 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg #
3/4 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts #
3/5 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts #
3/6 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club #
3/8 Toronto, ON - Phoenix Concert Theatre #
3/9 Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop #
3/10 Detroit, MI - St. Andrews Hall #
3/11 Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge #
3/12 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall #
3/13 Lawrence, KS - The Bottleneck #
# with Miniature Tigers and Brian Bonz
^ with Steel Train and River City Extension
"We were really sick of each other," vocalist/guitarist Matt Pryor told Exclaim! in a recent interview. "The closest thing I can liken it to is if you're in a long relationship with someone and they break up with you, and you're like 'I can never see that person again for the rest of my life,' and then three years later, you run into them at a party and realize, 'oh, I'm actually not mad at you anymore.'"
And three years was all it took. In late 2008, the band started to discuss playing a couple of festival shows. As a warm-up, they played a secret reunion show in their hometown of Kansas City, KS, a show that preceded the re-release of and tour to support the band's seminal 1999 album Something to Write Home About. Now, though, Pryor admits that the reissue was simply a means to their intended end.
"We could have just done a tour. We didn't have to spend a bunch of money putting that sort of thing together," he says. "I'm not trying to sound like I'm negative about the whole reissue process. If I can only put out one album a year, it's much more enjoyable for me as an artist to put out something that is fresh than to rehash old stuff."
Instead of continuing with their planned EP series, a full-length was made. Forgoing their traditional album process for an entirely collaborative, self-released one, the Get Up Kids' upcoming LP proper, There Are Rules, is a brash, melodic offering that's experimental in single "Shatter Your Lungs" and "Automatic," and familiar in the urgent pop-bred racket of "Pararelevant." It's the sound of a band moving forward, an observation that Pryor says has been pretty common.
"My buddy Chris Conley from Saves the Day said, 'Dude, it sounds like you guys -- from the future,'" he laughs, but his own take is a little more grounded. "It's definitely the sound of a band that is very comfortable playing what we like and we really don't give a shit if anyone likes it or not."
Though Pryor enjoys the non-committal stress this time around and says there are no current plans beyond the upcoming tour -- which includes one Canadian date on March 8 in Toronto -- he does have his eyes on another potential nostalgia project.
"Next year will be the 15-year [anniversary] of our first record, and I want to do a tour of just playing that record... Maybe we'll do the Four Minute Mile live record or something. I just don't know if I can get everyone to go along with it. They're just as weird about rehashing old crap as I am. But we'll see."
There Are Rules is due via the band's own Quality Hill Records on Tuesday (January 25). You can see all their North American tour dates below.
Tour dates:
1/25 Tempe, AZ - Clubhouse ^
1/26 San Diego, CA - House Of Blues ^
1/27 West Hollywood, CA - The Troubadour ^
1/28 Pomona, CA - The Glass House ^
1/29 San Francisco, CA - Slim's ^
1/30 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill ^
2/1 Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater ^
2/2 Seattle, WA - Neumo's ^
2/3 Seattle, WA - The Knitting Factory ^
2/4 Salt Lake City, UT - Club Sound ^
2/5 Denver, CO - Marquis Theater ^
2/23 Orlando, FL - The Social #
2/24 Orlando, FL - The Social #
2/25 St.Petersburg, FL - State Theatre #
2/26 Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club #
2/27 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle #
3/1 Washington, DC - The Black Cat #
3/2 New York, NY - Webster Hall #
3/3 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg #
3/4 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts #
3/5 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts #
3/6 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club #
3/8 Toronto, ON - Phoenix Concert Theatre #
3/9 Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop #
3/10 Detroit, MI - St. Andrews Hall #
3/11 Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge #
3/12 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall #
3/13 Lawrence, KS - The Bottleneck #
# with Miniature Tigers and Brian Bonz
^ with Steel Train and River City Extension
