The Get Up Kids - There Are Rules

I've got real history with The Get Up Kids. I've never met Suptic, Pope (both), Pryor, Dewees et al but they somehow seem to have figured in my battle through adolescence (which some say I have never won)  into manhood. As soon as I got my sweaty pubescent hands on a copy of Something To Write Home About in 1999 I was hooked. The intensity of melody and Pryor's yell of "what became of everyone I used to know?" when I saw them on one of their first London tours started a long love affair. I became a staunch pro TGUK fighter (some could say activist after the barrage of abuse I used to receive from the badger posse) providing a backlash to those who deemed the band "emo" and "whiny". It did help that at the age of 16 I was as tall and as shaven headed as I am now (5"10, bald) which meant that A) I bucked the trend of fragile, delicate looking people that were into the emo scene and B) my shoulders never properly fitted into a backpack....

This is not to say that TGUK did not have an emo based effect on me. I remember at university drunkenly trying to impress a girl by lending her my 4 Minute Mile CD. After sharing a kiss during the opening strains of "Coming Clean" she broke the news to me that she was moving away, as a result I got so blind drunk that I ended up naked in a freezer cabinet in a local supermarket...various people can verify this story.... I like to to think that I had the last laugh as my considerable girth landed on a collection of Findus Crispy Pancakes. They broke my fall and I was able to buy these pockets of filth at a discounted rate the following day due to the damage on the boxes... thank God for small victories and the fact I remembered to take the 4 Minute Mile CD off the woman in question.

But that was then and this is now...After TGUK's split after the 2004 offering Guilt Show I had done my time listening to the spin off bands (New Amsterdams, Reggie and the Full Effect) and was eagerly awaiting a new release. My inner emo kid craved something of the intensity of the first two albums or the understated ball achingly beautiful offerings on On A Wire (I still want Campfire Kansas played at my funeral)...what I got however was There Are Rules.

On first listen There Are Rules shows that The Get Up Kids have become The Get Up Men. Gone is the youthful rawness that pervaded their earlier career. It's no surprise I guess that 14 years after their debut the guys aren't writing songs about break up (No Love, Don't Hate Me) or alienation (10 Minutes). Instead we are faced with a more funky, less in your face style that seems more akin to the over produced, synth heavy Dewees fuelled 'Reggie and the Full Effect' merged with the more tuneful side of Pryor's 'The New Amsterdam'. Resonances of this can be found in the rather bizarre opening to the track 'Tithe' or the lyrically stand out 'When It Dies' (Better days, you bet on these, the company you keep).

It's safe to say that the new style takes a bit to get used to. Pryor's voice is still as strong as ever but a couple of the tracks seem to lack a bit of clarity (Keith Case and Shatter Your Lungs) and its the more stripped back and familiar tracks like Regents Court and Pararelevant that make your adrenaline pump and remind you of youthful misadventures. I think I put too much pressure on There Are Rules, I really, really wanted to like everything about it, learn all the words and connect with it in the way I had done with most of the other material, but I just couldn't. Musically the album is great. Some of the effects and synth work show what a true keyboard genius Dewees actually is and the guitars sounds as loud and as distorted as anything on Four Minute Mile but the whole thing just didn't click for me.

You have to feel some sort of sympathy for TGUK. There Are Rules shows the evolution of the band and indicates a more electro root that they wish to pursue, however I feel that the bulk of their fans would hark back to the throat shredding rawness of tracks like 'Forgive and Forget' (I think I've waited long enough, our world was once full of forget me nots) or 'Michelle with one L' (Am I asking too much to keep you at arms length, am I asking too much to keep you at all). I'll always love TGUK, I've got a massive robot tattoed on my arm because of them, they remind me of being covered in beer and raging hormones, I just didn't get the same buzz out of There Are Rules.

The Get Up Kids have grown up.... I haven't...

6.5/10

P.S... how comes the Japanese and Australian version gets two extra tracks and I don't....not cool...