Calling albums legendary, era-defining or ‘seminal’ might be increasingly common faire, but when it comes to The Get Up Kids‘ ‘Something to Write Home About’, the reverence is deserved. As they announce a new 25th-anniversary deluxe reissue, Rob Mair catches up with the band’s Matt Pryor to chat about a modern classic. Check out our latest Upset cover story.
Words: Rob Mair.
Photos: Shawn Brackbil.
“‘Something to Write Home About’ seems to have been a perfect storm of ‘right place, right time’. It connected with people; it still does. But even then, the right place, right time aspect of it, a lot of that is outside of the art itself. It was how it was promoted, it was the world around it, it was the audience’s willingness to listen to it… It was just perfect. Lightning in a bottle.”
The Get Up Kids’ Matt Pryor is right. ‘Something to Write Home About’ made the Kansas emo group the hottest band on Planet Rock in 1999 – but it was more than just lightning in a bottle. It was the lightning rod that connected the burgeoning second wave of emo, serving as the catalyst for the mainstream breakthrough.
The musical landscape of the time was in desperate need of something new. Grunge had long since gone. So, too, the mid-90s punk explosion, which had seen both Green Day and the Offspring migrate to major labels. Meanwhile, a third wave of ska – led by Less than Jake and Reel Big Fish – was rivalling nu-metal’s aggression as an outlet for the testosterone-fuelled youth. At this point, emo wasn’t even on the radar of the wider consciousness.
But while all this was being played out on MTV, a committed group of acts was crisscrossing the United States, fostering a network of connections rather than a codified sound. They were all united, however, by their honest, confessional lyrics and blistering work ethic.
In February 1999, Jimmy Eat World released their landmark album ‘Clarity’. Over the summer, At the Drive-In dropped their ‘Vaya’ EP and Hot Water Music released the seminal ‘No Division’, while in September alone, ‘American Football’ released their now beloved self-titled debut (although it caused little noise at the time), and the Promise Ring followed up their breakout ‘Nothing Feels Good’ with the equally brilliant ‘Very Emergency’. And that’s just the headline acts. Saves the Day, Rainer Maria, Brandtson, the Casket Lottery, Pop Unknown, Gameface and Sunday’s Best – who should receive some further credit for introducing the Postal Services’ Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello – all released iconic albums throughout the year. The scene was sparking into life; it just needed a catalyst to burn the doors down.
The Get Up Kids were unlikely candidates but had built up a steady following off the back of their debut album, ‘Four Minute Mile’. Recorded in two and a half days with Shellac’s Bob Weston in Chicago, it’s full of youthful exuberance and some sharp songs – most notably ‘No Love’ and ‘Don’t Hate Me’ – but it also sounded like a record made in two and a half days.
“It’s barely a record,” laughs Matt. “It’s like a really expensive demo. It wasn’t a bad experience making ‘Four Minute Mile’, but it wasn’t how we heard it in our heads.”
Although the results didn’t meet their expectations, it gave the group (completed by brothers Ryan and Robert Pope and Jim Suptic, and later joined by James Dewees) the leg-up they needed to get out of Kansas. Distributed by the label Doghouse (set up by Majority of One and Colossus of the Fall’s Dirk Hemsath), it soon found a home amongst punk and hardcore fans—and it resulted in the Get Up Kids earning the much-derided ’emo’ badge.
“We considered ourselves an indie-rock band, until people started calling us emo,” says Matt. “Well, actually, we first got lumped into the hardcore scene, and we were like, ‘Well, this doesn’t make any sense at all’. Then the word emo kept getting thrown around. Originally, it was derogatory, but we were only in this scene out of necessity because they were the only people willing to put the record out. We were listening to stuff like Archers of Loaf, Superchunk, and Modest Mouse.
“The thing is, with all this stuff, you shake the tree a little bit, take all the subtext off of it, it’s still two guitars, bass, drums and vocals at the end of the day. It’s not Gregorian chanting.”
But while ‘Four Minute Mile’ was doing great guns word of mouth, Doghouse couldn’t keep it pressed fast enough, meaning fans were struggling to buy the record. In Europe, however, a tour with the more established Braid proved so successful that the Get Up Kids ended up headlining the run. Word was catching on about the group.
Unsurprisingly, it meant there was interest in the follow-up, and although the band ultimately ended up on Vagrant, the future of the Get Up Kids could have gone in a myriad of directions, including with Mojo, Sub Pop or Geffen.
As alluded to by Pryor when he said about ‘right place, right time’, right label is equally applicable to the story. Indeed, while ‘Something to Write Home About’ and Vagrant Records are now synonymous, the decision to go with the indie was also a sliding doors moment. Would we be here today, talking about its legacy if the Get Up Kids had gone elsewhere? It’s an interesting hypothetical.
“Even with Sub Pop, it always felt like there was an A&R person who believed in us who was steering the ship. And maybe if we’d have gone with them, we’d have had a similar trajectory,” says Matt. “In the end, we went with Vagrant out of desperation because every time we got kicked up the chain of command, someone would say, ‘I don’t get it’. They’d be like, ‘This is a baby band’. We weren’t a baby band. We’d put out a record and toured for two whole years.
“But also, this whole emo scene wasn’t on the radar. Look at Jimmy Eat World – arguably the biggest of our contemporaries. They’d just put out ‘Clarity’ – a perfect record – and got dropped by their record label.
“It’s a very earnest and honest record, written by people who are going through a lot of relationship drama”
Matt Pryor
“So, if there was a sliding doors moment to it, I don’t think it would necessarily be a positive one. We could have signed a fairly lucrative deal with Sub Pop. We could have signed a not-that-great major label deal and been shelved. Maybe we’d have been given some money to make a music video that would have been played on 120 Minutes one time and then disappeared.
“What we had with Vagrant, more than anything else, was people who cared about us and wanted us to succeed. They were willing to bet on us as much as we were betting on ourselves.”
In the case of ‘Something to Write Home About’, this notion of betting on the Get Up Kids was pulled into sharp focus by the actions of Vagrant co-owner Jon Cohen. He convinced his parents to re-mortgage their home so that the fledgling Californian label could sign the band and fund the recording of the record. In short, they literally bet their house on the act.
“They didn’t tell us that, which was probably smart,” says Pryor. “I don’t know how comfortable I’d have been about that. I found out when I read that Punk Planet article [How to Ruin Everything: The Rocky Rise of Vagrant Records]. We were like, ‘Wait, that happened?’ They were like, ‘Oh yeah. You didn’t know about that?’ Like, ‘No! Why would we know that!’ It was quite the risk.”
Within the opening bars of ‘Holiday’, you can tell the risk had paid off. Urgent and demanding, it’s the sound of a band leaving everything out there – even before Pryor’s vocals come charging through, pleading, ‘What became of everyone I used to know? / Where did our respectable convictions go?’.
From two and a half days in the studio – and drawing upon their experiences recording a slew of singles, split 7 inches and EPs – the Get Up Kids sound like an entirely different beast. They’d also road-tested the life out of the songs, meaning they were ready to go from the off.
The result was a series of 12 songs, devoid of fat and primed for an expectant audience. The bangers – ‘Holiday’, ‘Action and Action’, ‘Ten Minutes’ – are peerless, and the ballads – ‘Valentine’, ‘Out of Reach’, ‘Long Goodnight’ – are the finest torch songs you can imagine. Heck, even the album’s best song, ‘Close to Home’, finds itself in the inauspicious spot of eleventh in the track listing. It also, to this day, sounds spectacular.
“One of the things I can remember talking about was that we wanted the guitars to be big. Like, really, really big,” says Matt. “There’s probably a lot of unnecessary guitar layering on the record, but that was the style at the time. There are probably six or seven redundant guitar tracks. I mean, the fucking thing kicks off with two pick slides; it’s just so ridiculously over the top.
“But also touring; before ‘Something to Write Home About’, we toured for two years, so even though we hadn’t played all the songs live, we knew what worked. That was the last time we ever got to do that. It gets to the point where if you’re charging enough money for a concert ticket, you don’t want to be like, ‘Here’s five new songs we’ve been working on’.”
Equally, there’s an adage that you have a lifetime to make your first record and, if you’re lucky, two years to write a follow-up. This is often the reason for the so-called ‘sophomore slump’, where a second record never reaches the heights of its predecessor. ‘Four Minute Mile’ is an exemplary record – and has undoubtedly maintained a loyal and hardcore following over the years – but as outlined by Pryor, it’s also a glorified demo.
It also means any sense of the sophomore slump doesn’t apply to ‘Something to Write Home About’.
“If you listen to ‘Four Minute Mile’ versus ‘Something to Write Home About’, and someone told you they were two different bands, that wouldn’t sound that far-fetched,” says Matt. “If anything, we had the same amount of time between our first record and starting the band as we did between our first record and making our second record, but we grew up a lot in that time. We were no longer at school or college.”
“I knew nothing about the BMX and skateboarding videos. People ask me about it all the time, and they’re always bummed that I have no idea what they’re talking about”
Matt Pryor
But both records talk about relatable stuff – relationships, finding your place in the world, young adult growing pains. Even today, the lyrics remain relevant. There are no delusions of grandeur – it’s an honest record written by people figuring this shit out at the same time as their audience.
It’s therefore no surprise that it quickly found the right audience. File sharing was just taking off, while Vagrant had a very strong street team presence, meaning word of mouth was helping to promote the band. So, too, was licencing, with the band finding themselves the soundtrack to countless extreme sports videos. In fact, in my old university house, we had four copies of ‘Something to Write Home About’ between us, and one came from this very route, alongside – bizarrely – Jets to Brazil’s ‘Orange Rhyming Dictionary’. To this day, it’s still a route to the music that Matt finds unfathomable.
“It’s not like we had a big explosion – we just kept chugging along, and people kept sharing the record, but I knew nothing about the BMX and skateboarding videos. People ask me about it all the time, and they’re always bummed that I have no idea what they’re talking about,” he laughs.
This broad appeal might also be one of the reasons behind the album’s enduring success. The fact that it continues to place highly on lists of the best emo albums of all time is a testament to its impact, as is the fact that it’s widely cited as a key influence by the emo bands that emerged during the next wave. Such a legacy means it’s ripe for new audiences to discover, while its content matter ensures it remains timeless and appropriate.
“It’s a very earnest and honest record, written by people who are going through a lot of relationship drama… Take ‘Orange Rhyming Dictionary’. I love that record, but how many 14-year-olds are getting into it? It’s a bit of a think piece and doesn’t necessarily speak to teenage angst or twenty-something angst.
“I think the reputation of ‘Something to Write Home About’ precedes it sometimes. It always ends up on a bunch of lists – like those ‘records you need to hear if you like…’, which bugs me because it’s turning art into a competition. But, when I was kid, it would be like, ‘Oh, I like Guns’n’Roses, what did they listen to?’ And then you’re suddenly back at T-Rex, like, ‘This is cool’. I think that’s what we are,” laughs Matt.
Just as they did with ‘Four Minute Mile’, the Get Up Kids will take the anniversary shows for ‘Something to Write Home About’ on the road. Twenty-five years ago, they toured so intently, thanks to the punishing promo campaign, it nearly broke them. This time – with the stakes somewhat lower – they’re enjoying the experience. After all, many of these songs have formed the backbone of the group’s live set for years.
“People often ask me if I’m sick of these songs. And I’m not. I’m just sick of rehearsing them. But when you’re onstage, you’re basically an energy vampire, feeding off the excitement of the audience.
“When we did ‘Four Minute Mile’, I was really surprised at how tense the crowd was and how connected they were to that record. I just thought it was going to be a regular show.
“I’m preparing myself for ‘Something to Write Home About’ because I know these shows will be more… I guess emotional is the right word.” ■
The Get Up Kids’ 25th anniversary deluxe reissue of ‘Something To Write Home About’ is out digitally on 23rd August, and physically on 20th September. Follow Upset’s Spotify playlist here.
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