In the two and a half decades since the release of their landmark second album

Something to Write Home About, the four core members of The Get Up Kids - Matt Pryor,

Jim Suptic, Rob Pope, and Ryan Pope — have explored side projects, helmed solo

ventures, and held stints in high-profile bands. They've also started businesses, found

spouses, and raised kids. Still, run into them on the streets of Lawrence, Kansas, these

days, and you'll find that - perhaps beneath a beard - each has retained the high-spirited,

unwavering authenticity that fans stood feet from at basement shows before the band's

sophomore breakthrough.

Something to Write Home About has landed in a similar place: recognizable as the same

electrifying, scrappy album it was upon release, but also transformed by time into one of

the most seminal records of the band's scene. And to mark 25 years since its arrival, The

Get Up Kids will perform the album in full throughout Australia.

Released in September of 1999, Something to Write Home About has been established as

an important late-millennium rock-and-roll document; a convergence of power pop,

alternative rock, and punk, it provided the parameters for emo's Midwest-centered second

wave. Youthful yet assured, the album expands and refines the sound of the band's 1997

debut Four Minute Mile. Amplified and acoustic guitars by Pryor and Suptic are coupled

with keys and synths provided by former member James Dewees.

Throughout, strings and celeste mesh with pop-indebted harmonies as the Pope Brothers'

rhythm section propels each song. The lyrics, carried primarily by Pryor's pugnacious

vocals, use relationships as a springboard to explore betrayal, conviction, and ambition.

His plainspoken poetry is in turn direct and oblique, all kindling for fresh fires in addition to

those already burning for decades of faithful listeners.

Today, Something to Write Home About still sounds like the lodestar it was for its fleet of

followers, but it also retains something singular: an affecting, unaffected quality richer than

its genre associations, bigger than its hooks, and deeper than mere twentysomething

turmoil. And through emo's reappraisals and revivals, the band-which now includes

keyboard player Dustin Kinsey-has carried on, releasing albums, remaining friends, and

playing all over the world.

The upcoming Something to Write Home About anniversary tour will be a chance for fans

to rediscover the album or to revel in a classic they've never forgotten, and experience it

live with the brash, bighearted band that loves it as much as them. "Anybody can start a

band when you're 20 and go on tour and have a couple of years of fun with that. But what

it became, at least to us, is the reason that we can still do this now," says Pryor. "We are

doing this as a celebration, and we're going to have a party every night on stage.

LION ARTS FACTORY, ADELAIDE // FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19