This spring, Emo Rock heroes The Get Up Kids released their first full-length album in eight years, Problems. The band is touring the world in support of the new album, including a stop in Chicago for Riot Fest next week, then dates in Australia and Japan.
In November, the Kids return to the States for a cross-country tour that brings them to Newport's Southgate House Revival on Dec. 11. Tickets for the all-ages show ($20 in advance) are on sale now through ticketweb.com. Kevin Devine and The Whiffs will open.
The first phase of The Get Up Kids' career began in 1995 in Kansas City, as the group rose from the ashes of a high school band and a group called Secret Decoder Ring. The Kids' first album, Four Minute Mile, and extensive DIY touring drew the attention of fans, critics and labels, including Vagrant Records, which signed the band. Four Minute Mile was also influential on a generation of up-and-coming musicians, including the members of Fall Out Boy, who have cited the Kids as a major early inspiration ("Fall Out Boy would not be a band if it were not for The Get Up Kids," FOB's Pete Wentz once said in an Alternative Press interview).
The Get Up Kids' 1999 album Something to Write Home About broke big and solidified the band as the guiding light of the "second wave" Emo sound. After two more albums, burnout and inner-band tension led to the group's split in 2005. The musicians explored individual creative paths — keyboardist James Dewees with his long-running Reggie and the Full Effect band and singer Matt Pryor with The New Amsterdams and as a solo artist, among other projects — before reuniting in 2009 for a Something to Write Home About 10th-anniversary tour. The band released an EP in 2010, which they followed up with the full-length There Are Rules in early 2011.
This year's release of Problems attracted The Get Up Kids some of the best reviews of their career, with Kerrang! writing, "Not only is it a record that touches on every facet of the band’s career to date, but it also… finds the band renewed, re-energised and — most importantly – not caring about what anybody else thinks."
