Get Up Kids: "Regent's Court"

If anything distinctly separated the Get Up Kids from their contemporaries in the late ’90s and early ’00s it was their preference for earnestness over attitude.  Avoiding both smart-assed gimmickry and by-the-books commercialism, this sincerity was laced through a restless catalog (Eudora’s [2001] knack for unlikely covers, On a Wire‘s [2002] reach for maturity) and informed the band’s best decisions. Like breaking up, for example: what more sincere resolution could the Kansas-based quintet make in 2005—the whiny apex of third-generation emo—than disband and cut their losses? Hell: the only juicy bit of news released from their camp over the following three years was guitarist Jim Suptic’s open apology for unintentionally shaping emo into its current, hapless state.  

It’s not entirely surprising, then, that this early taste of There Are Rules finds the reformed Get Up Kids taking cues from another band that knew when to take cover: the Strokes.  Even before we find out that vocalist Matt Pryor has traded his husky whine for an understated croon, “Regent’s Court” announces itself via a succession of post-millennial New York swagger tropes, as if Fabrizio Moretti’s drum-machine-like precision is pulsing coolly beneath serrated rhythm guitars.  

Sure, its angular verses eventually loosen into a tailor-made Get Up Kids chorus—hook-fed with Pryor’s sing-along appeal—but these Strokes-isms feel studied, not coincidental, and reflect the band’s keen ability to absorb outside musical risks and grease them until they’re edgeless. In the same manner that Something to Write Home About (1999) whittled all of Pinkerton‘s (1996) angst and idiosyncrasies down to a hollow pop core, “Regent’s Court” benefits from keeping tabs on the coattails of modern rock. In fact, this two-minute clash of indie-rock templates is so transparent that it also sums up the Get Up Kids’ restless career better than any career retrospective inevitably lying over the horizon.