Recap The Get Up Kids at Marquis Theater

The Get Up Kids broke up in 2005, marking of the end of the so-called second wave of emo, only to reunite three years later, touring again and playing the old songs from that bygone era. In other words, not much has changed.

The breakup was not a particularly amicable one, but in a pleasant surprise, there wasn’t any evidence of that onstage last Tuesday at the Marquis Theater. Lead singer Matt Pryor was a smiley fellow, laughing at tiny missteps from the band that only he could hear. Things got crazy at one point when crowd-surfers began flinging beer onto the stage; Pryor quipped, “We always used to have this joke that the band drank more than the audience.” He paused and grinned. “Not anymore.”

Blasting through fan favorites such as “Don’t Hate Me,” “Action & Action,” and “Mass Pike,” the Kids' set played like a somewhat predictable greatest hits album. They did touch on some of their more mature, experimental material from On A Wire and Guilt Show, but mostly they stuck to the tried-and-true pop-punk of the first two releases.

Back-to-back covers of The Cure’s “Close To Me” and The Replacements’ “Beer For Breakfast” erupted into energetic sing-alongs and served as perfect encore selections, leading into their triumphant closer, “Ten Minutes.”

Despite the wave of nostalgia flowing through the room, there were some definite reminders that it’s not the late ’90s anymore. The Kids were looking a little old and had definitely put on a few pounds during their time off. Pryor seemed out of breath now and then, and decided in places to sing a lower harmony where once he would have belted out his lines during the higher intensity passages. But all told, the Kids were well-rehearsed, they sounded good, and perhaps most surprisingly, they seemed to be having a blast playing the same songs they’ve been playing for years.