Giveaway Time: The Get Up Kids @ Warehouse Live, This Fri. (+ MP3!)

Yep, it’s true; in case you haven’t been paying attention, after 6 years of being dead & buried, iconic Kansas-dwelling emo pioneers The Get Up Kids are really, truly back in the realm of the living.

They’d reunited briefly in 2008, but it seemed like something of a one-off, especially since everybody in the band was off doing their own thing — guitarist/singer Jim Suptic with (the awesome, underappreciated Blackpool Lights), singer/guitarist Matt Pryor with The New Amsterdams, keyboardist James Dewees with Reggie and the Full Effect, and bros Rob & Ryan Pope running Black Lodge Recording. The guys all definitely kept busy after the Kids’ implosion.

Apparently what I’d thought was a one-off took, however, because the band’s releasing its first full-length, There Are Rules, January 25th on their own brand-new Quality Hill Records.

And better still, they’re now touring the country (with Steel Train & River City Extension, neither of whom I know much about, sorry), stopping here in our not-so-fair city this coming Friday, January 21st at Warehouse Live.

The band’s new album is a far cry, honestly, from anything Suptic, Pryor, & the rest of the Kids have done before now, at least to my ears — it’s a lot more dance-y and electronics-heavy, almost like Bloc Party with more straight-up indie-rock vocals, or maybe a more tightly-wound Jane’s Addiction, and there’s an oddly futuristic feel to it. To the band’s credit, it still works pretty darn well, but some diehards may be a bit thrown off by the change.

If you want a taste for yourself, here’s one of the tracks off the album:

The Get Up Kids – “Regent’s Court”

I have to wonder if the sonic shift is an attempt on the Kids’ part to distance themselves from the now-dreaded “emo” tag, especially given some of the things they’ve said in recent interviews. If so, that’s a damn shame — the cynics can snicker if they want about the whole emo wave of the ’90s, but for those who lived through it and loved the music (then and now, at least in my case), hell, there’s nothing at all to apologize for.

These five guys, whether they like it or not, were among the primary architects of a whole musical shift, and as somebody who stumbled upon it in my formative college years, I can honestly say my world wouldn’t be the same without ’em. No shame in that from where I sit, regardless of where it’s gone since.

Anyway, Walk Down Memory Lane over; it’s time to get down to business, as it were…

If you want to see the Get Up Kids show this Friday, well, we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away to some lucky soul. If you want ’em, send an email to “contests” and “spacecityrock dot com”, with the Subject: line “One night doesn’t mean the rest of my life,” and if we oh-so-scientifically pull your name out of a hat, hey, you win!

(For all those unlucky folks who don’t win the pair of tix we’ve got to give away, by the by, you’re not totally screwed — you can still head on over here to buy your own…)