I bought two Get Up Kids reissues, so I thought I'd write a thinkpiece about it or whatever

You’re just a phase I’ve gotten over anyhow

If emo music truly stuck with you past a certain age, then good for you, because it’s not the kind of thing that I was really able to carry completely with me into adulthood.

I say “truly” and “carry completely” because I haven’t forsaken the genre altogether—just look at my recent purchase history, including that Promise Ring reissue that came out late last year, as well as my decision to impulse buy not one but two vinyl reissues by The Get Up Kids (which is why we are here in the first place.)

I got into emo accidentally as a 16 year old in rural Illinois. Back then, in 1999, I didn’t know it was “emo.” I discovered it by watching “120 Minutes,” and caught Promise Ring and Get Up Kids videos, thinking that it was just poppy indie rock. I had no idea, until much later, that it was part of a much larger movement.

I don’t sit around and listen to emo very much anymore as a whole—though albums like Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity and The Get Up Kids Something to Write Home About hold a special place in my heart. To some extent, I consider them classics, but not the same way I think of OK Computer as a classic, if that makes sense. It’s just mostly be compartmentalizing things that I feel like I maybe should have grown out of at some point.

It was the winter of 1999 that I got into The Get Up Kids, using Christmas money to purchase a copy of Something from a record store in a town near my own. I believe it was also Christmas money that I gave to my mom so I could use her credit card and order a copy of the band’s scrappy debut, Four Minute Mile off of Amazon. Back then, when I was just a kid, I drove a big white mini van with a tape deck in it, so I did a lot of taping—I would buy 90 or 100 minute tapes, and then put two albums by one artist on it. One of those many tapes was my Get Up Kids albums.

I think even back then, I liked Something to Write Home About better. It’s just a more fully formed album, despite Four Minute Mile’s ramshackle, lo-fi charm. But you kind of can’t really have one without the other—they pay each other weird compliments, and you get to see the development of the band over the course of a relatively short amount of time.

Since I still have relatively fond memories of both albums, I opted to purchase a bundled set of them from the band’s former label, Doghouse Records—with Four Minute Mile having just been reissued on splattered vinyl in January, and Something to Write Home About having arrived in November.

Four Minute Mile is the kind of debut release that shows a lot of promise. The band had energy to spare, there was no doubt about it—and it was that energy they were able to correctly hone into a more structured sound on Something to Write Home About.

Being 19 and 17 years old, respectively, how well have these albums aged? Are they still relevant, and worthy of that “classic” status we are so quick to bestow on at least one of the—possibly both of them?

As I said earlier, I always looked a little lesson Four Minute Mile, even as a 16 year old, simply because of its scrappy aesthetic—but it’s that charm that has allowed it to age. Not gracefully, but also not terribly. It, like so many other records of its ilk, are pure products of their time.

 

In listening to Four Minute Mile now, as a grown ass man, I see that there’s a real sense of urgency within that scrappy aesthetic. These songs were anthems at the time—they needed to be committed to tape, and it was even more imperative that they be heard. There aren’t so much “sing a long “ moments on the album as there are “shout a long”—shout it out with the band until your voice is hoarse—specifically on the infamous refrain to “No Love.”

It is, in its own right, a classic slice of nervy, unpredictable teenage angst, set to explosive, surprising moments, distorted power chords, chugging bass lines, and pummeling drums.

Something to Write Home About, in a sense, sounds like a completely different band recorded it. That nervy edge and sense of urgency have been replaced with stronger, more deliberate, and much more thoughtful songwriting—something that becomes very apparent in the album’s second half—like “The Company Dime,” “My Apology” and the somber ballad “A Long Goodnight.”

Gone is that lo-fi, garage band aesthetic, and it its place is something slick—not incredibly slick, but it’s a night and day comparison. The production values may have been upped, and there may be robots on the front cover, but neither of those facts takes away from just how very human, and just how very emotional this album is, and still is, 17 years down the line.

Revisiting both albums now, as an adult, is comforting in a way, because they are both so familiar—Something to Write Home About far more familiar than Four Minute Mile.

This probably the point in a review of vinyl reissues where I’d talk about the reissues themselves—about the colored vinyl they are pressed on, and about the sound quality. If they’ve been pressed well, I would probably use the expression “rich warmth” to describe how they sound, coming off of my turntable. If they were not pressed, well, I’d talk about how the sound gets a little compressed and crispy sounding at times.

It’s also this point in the review that I’d like to give a special shout out to the United States Postal Service for losing my records in the mail temporarily. I would have had this review up and online a lot sooner had they arrived on Monday, when they were supposed to. But instead, they were misplaced for two days, arriving on Wednesday.

This whole time I’ve been writing this review partially from memory, partially from a copy of Four Minute Mile I downloaded from someone’s old abandoned blog, and partially from my warn out CD copy of Something.

But now that they’ve made it into my hot little hands, what is the verdict?

Well, the scrappy, lo-fi nature of Four Minute Mile really lends itself well to this vinyl reissue—it sounds great, and still just as urgent as it did to me when I heard it the first time in high school.

Packaging wise, the reissue of Something to Write Home About tries—with a gatefold to reveal the same interior artwork as the CD copy—however, in formatting from a CD digipack to that of a vinyl sleeve, some distortion has occurred, giving it an overall odd look.

Despite that setback, it, too, sounds great; there’s that talk of “rich warmth” you’ve been waiting for—these songs, in their feeling and in their sonic landscapes, lend themselves very well to hearing on vinyl.

Are these reissues worth buying? Yeah, probably.  I mean, for me, they were kind of an impulse buy based on a conversation I was recently having on if these record still slay or not—the verdict is that they do. Revisiting these albums in other forms has been a pure nostalgia trip—and isn’t that the whole point of vinyl reissues in the first place?

Both reissues are available now via Doghouse Records.