Artist

The Get Up Kids

Kansas City, United States • Formed 1995

The Get Up Kids is a music group from Kansas City, United States, active since 1995. Their discography on Gatefold includes 17 records.

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Albums tracked

171

In collections

1995

Since

Biography

The Get Up Kids are an American emo band formed in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1995. The band was a major player in the mid-90's emo scene, otherwise known as the "second wave" of emo music. As they gained prominence, they began touring with bands such as Green Day and Weezer before becoming headliners themselves, eventually embarking on international tours of Japan and Europe. They founded Heroes & Villains Records, an imprint of the successful indie rock label Vagrant Records.

The Arc of The Get Up Kids

The pivots — what forced The Get Up Kids to reinvent.

The Weston Sessions
Recording with Bob Weston at Chicago’s Electrical Audio defined their early, aggressive sound. Weston’s influence stripped away any fluff, focusing on the interplay between the Pope brothers' rhythm section and the dual-guitar attack of Pryor and Suptic. You can hear the basement-show urgency in the bleed between the mics, capturing a band that hadn't yet figured out how to be pop stars. It’s the rawest they ever sounded before the synthesizers took over the mix.
The Vagrant Explosion
Bringing James Dewees in as a full-time member changed the DNA of the band just as they moved to Vagrant Records. The addition of the Moog and layered keyboards on Something to Write Home About moved them away from the post-hardcore leanings of the KC scene and into a brighter, more structured power-pop territory. This was the moment they became a massive commercial engine, influencing a wave of bands that took their sincerity and turned it into a formulaic commodity. The record sounds like a band realizing they could actually play stadiums if they tightened the screws.
The Guilt Show Burnout
By 2004, the band was visibly fraying, evidenced by the darker, more cynical tone of Guilt Show. They moved away from the anthemic hooks of the previous decade, leaning into more experimental arrangements and a weary, mid-tempo vibe that confused the fans who just wanted another 'Holiday.' The friction between the members was palpable on the tracks, leading to an inevitable hiatus shortly after the release. It’s a record that sounds like the end of an era because it literally was, marking the point where the pressure of the 'emo' label finally broke the machine.

Influences

Superchunk — Matt Pryor has explicitly cited Mac McCaughan’s vocal delivery and the band's DIY ethos as the primary blueprint for early Get Up Kids. You hear it in the high-register strain and the driving, distorted downstrokes on tracks like 'Coming Clean.' They took the Chapel Hill indie-punk template and added a Midwest layer of desperation.
Fugazi — Before the pop hooks took over, the band was obsessed with the rhythmic tension of the DC scene. Jim Suptic often points to Fugazi’s angular guitar interplay as the reason he and Pryor played the way they did on the early EPs. The influence is all over the messy, dissonant bridges on Four Minute Mile.
The Cure — The band famously covered 'Close to Me' and James Dewees brought a heavy dose of Robert Smith’s melodic keyboard sensibility to the group. You can hear the synth-pop influence on the lead lines of Something to Write Home About, where the keys act as a counter-melody to the vocals. It moved them from punk-adjacent to something much more atmospheric.
The Replacements — Pryor has repeatedly mentioned Paul Westerberg’s songwriting as the gold standard for being vulnerable without being pathetic. The loose, almost-falling-apart energy of 'Valentine' is a direct descendant of Let It Be. It’s that specific brand of Midwestern 'loser' anthem that the Kids perfected.
Sunny Day Real Estate — They shared stages early on, and the dynamic shifts between quiet verses and explosive choruses on Diary became the structural foundation for the Kids' louder tracks. You hear Jeremy Enigk’s influence in the way Pryor pushes his voice to the breaking point during the climaxes. They took the Seattle emo-core foundation and made it faster and more melodic.