Photo Credit: Dalton Paley<\/p>\n
Review by Robin Sheng<\/span><\/p>\n The Get Up Kids performed at Boston\u2019s Big Night Live venue as a part of its 25th-anniversary tour for its sophomore and the most well-known album, \u201cSomething to Write Home About,\u201d on Oct. 3. While The Get Up Kids rose from the \u201cMidwestern emo\u201d movement in the 1990s, many fans of emo music in later decades cherish the band and \u201cSomething to Write Home About\u201d<\/span> in particular for their distinct influence on a more pop-oriented style of emo popular in the 2000s, representing a transitional phase within the emo genre. The show\u2019s attendants were generationally diverse, ranging from forty-year-olds who presumably grew up with the band to teenagers who seemed younger than me, reflecting The Get Up Kids\u2019 long-lasting influence on the emo genre across its various eras and styles.<\/span><\/p>\n The show opened with a set from Smoking Popes, whose music was unfortunately forgettable. Many of their performances left me baffled as I struggled to grasp onto bits of their songwriting that I could recall. Despite their mediocre songwriting, The Smoking Popes played with impressive energy, fulfilling their functions as the opener. As the Smoking Popes finished their set, the audience became noticeably more engaged in the concert than before.<\/span><\/p>\n By the time The Get Up Kids took the stage, the crowd was in full motion. As soon as the iconic opening guitar riff of \u201cHoliday\u201d reached the crowd, there was a distinct explosion of energy that stretched onto the furthest rows of the audience, complementing the band\u2019s intense performance. \u201cAction & Action,\u201d another well-known song from the album, marked an even higher peak in crowd energy as some members of the audience started moshing. As the bouncy synthesizer melody pulsed throughout the performance, so did the attendants. While I am personally not into moshing in general, my friend who went to the concert with me found the moshing experience rather enjoyable, as her fellow moshers were generally kind to her, fitting the sincere and affective quality found in The Get Up Kids\u2019 music. Both \u201cHoliday\u201d and \u201cAction & Action\u201d were performed by the band with sincere energy and impressive cohesion, demonstrating their maturity as a single unit of expression.<\/span><\/p>\n After a few songs, it became clear that The Get Up Kids are also experts at engaging with the crowd. During the slow and melancholy \u201cOut of Reach,\u201d the band encouraged the audience to sing along, a task that they embraced. The crowd\u2019s singalongs were especially suitable for the song\u2019s bittersweet emotions, which echoed throughout the venue for the song\u2019s duration.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, one significant flaw of the concert was the vocal mixing, which became most apparent during \u201cTen Minutes.\u201d Not only did the lead singer\u2019s emotion-packed vocals sound oddly artificial due to the subpar mixing, but there were also moments where his vocals became buried by the crowd\u2019s singalongs in the mix. Of course, the singalongs were instrumental to the enjoyable, warm atmosphere of the concert, and I would certainly prefer that over a crowd that didn\u2019t engage with the show at all. Ideally, however, one should be able to feel the warmth of crowd singalongs while simultaneously hearing the lead singer\u2019s voice clearly.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m A Loner Dottie, A Rebel\u201d was my favorite performance of the night by far, opening with an energetic and engulfing guitar riff accompanied by especially passionate drumming. Already a fantastic song itself, the live rendition made it sound fuller, more sincere, and even more evocative of the song\u2019s emotional complexity. Moreover, the band sincerely reciprocated the crowd\u2019s engagement throughout the concert, giving an appreciative speech to the audience before performing the album closer. The band cited the crowd\u2019s generation diversity as constructive to the concert\u2019s positive atmosphere and thanked the younger attendants for carrying the band\u2019s legacy forward.<\/span><\/p>\n The Get Up Kids continued to play nine more songs from various other records. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear why \u201cSomething to Write Home About\u201d was their most acclaimed album \u2013 these songs from their other albums are simply not as well written. One exception was \u201cWalking on A Wire.\u201d Featuring an angular guitar line and drumming reminiscent of Trip-hop, the performance evoked a colder and more anxious atmosphere that stood out from the rest of the songs. After a full album and several more songs of similar qualities, I found this change-up in atmosphere quite appreciable.<\/span><\/p>\n The show closed with a song from their debut album, \u201cDon\u2019t Hate Me\u201d, in which its unique structure made it suitable as a closer. As the song moved from its energetic punk-ish first half to a mellower second half, the audience shifted from fervent moshing to casual swinging, ending the concert on an appropriate note. Indeed, as I found myself relaying my concert experience to my parents two days later, The Get Up Kids\u2019 performance was truly something to write home about.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photo Credit: Dalton Paley Review by Robin Sheng The Get Up Kids performed at Boston\u2019s Big Night Live venue as a part of its 25th-anniversary tour for its sophomore and the most well-known album, \u201cSomething to Write Home About,\u201d on Oct. 3. While The Get Up Kids rose from the \u201cMidwestern emo\u201d movement in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24057,"featured_media":43318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525,1523,15],"tags":[995,97,31,2100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24057"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44210,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43317\/revisions\/44210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}