Records have the power to return us to places long since left and The Get Up Kids’ seminal sophomore album Something to Write Home About, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with the release of a deluxe, remastered edition, might send listeners back to their teenage bedrooms and an easier time full of punk rock summers without a care in the world.
For the members of The Get Up Kids, the album transports them to Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood, where they spent six weeks in the summer of 1999 recording what would be their genre-defining outing.
Something to Write Home About captured the band’s growing musicianship–their playing pivots from aggressive to sensitive from track to track, sometimes even within songs–and featured keyboard textures from James Dewees that realized the band’s ambitions to push beyond stripped-down punk.
It’s an album full of pop-leaning emo that would guide the genre’s explosion in the new millennium, and go on to inspire platinum-selling bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, as well as wave upon wave of emo revival acts.
For the 2024 reissue, the original album tracks were remastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound and the packaging features expanded artwork plus an album’s worth of demos, including four-track acoustic recordings by Pryor.
So If you’re in the mood for a trip down memory lane while the sun still shines before we head into winter, this remastered album is the perfect soundtrack to rekindle those feelings of freedom and youth. Iconic tracks like “Red Letter Day” and “Ten Minutes” are sure to stir up distant memories of teenage misbehaviour and punks forming bands of their own, especially after two decades of not really hearing or thinking about them.
The addition of the bonus demo tracks on this remastered release offers a special treat for longtime fans, providing a glimpse into the creative process that brought this influential album to life. It’s a testament to the lasting impact The Get Up Kids have had, inspiring the countless bands that followed in their footsteps so go have a listen and take a trip back in time to 1999.