The original recordings of the 1999 album, remastered for this reissue, still sound unique and prophetic of the shape of emo to come. Pryor's lyrics embody the way teenage relationships can feel huge and small at the same time: Summer didn't just pass them by—in “Close to Home,” it “swallowed us whole.” In “Long Goodnight,” he writes like an incredibly impatient AP English student in one line (“Lest I forget”) before insisting, “I'm not bitter, anyway,” in the next. The album takes its hushed riffs as seriously as its delicate piano ballads. “I'm a Loner, Dottie, a Rebel” imagines a world where multiple time signatures and headbanging breakdowns coexist symbiotically, the former doubling the intensity of the latter. Something to write Home it framed the everyday problems of coming of age with the intensity of a Victorian drama, performed with the zeal of a band that wouldn't miss another opportunity in the studio.
The demos included in the reissue offer hints of other paths the team could have taken. The band was already well on its way to the brighter side of the KROQ rotation when James Dewees, drummer for Kansas City metal outfit Coalesce, joined as the band's keyboardist in 1998. Their last EP Doghouse, Red Letter Dayhad ended with what sounds in retrospect like a hint of things to come: On “Mass Pike,” Dewees strums a piano melody while a drum machine comes to life in the background. Whether they knew it or not they were adding one Amadeus-beloved pianist when he was brought in (the Dewees had come to attention for throwing a drum kit into the audience), the Get Up Kids' second album would be indelibly marked by his chirping and piano turns. His influence—not only on the band's sound, but also on the sound of emo offspring like Anniversary and Motion City Soundtrack—is starkly revealed in his absence: An early full-band demo of “Ten Minutes” included on the reissue sounds hollow without Dewees' Earthly Melodies. Without her opening piano, a 4-track recording of “The Company Dime” is charmingly humble but subtle, just layers of guitar and Pryor's voice, a far cry from the extended version that ended up on the album.
Elsewhere, the demos reveal iterations of the band's writing process: The initial demo for “Valentine” stumbles into what Pryor called a “twangy” guitar riff before reaching for the laments in its lyrics. For the final version, the band chose an intro that, upon close listening, is reminiscent of Red Letter Day cut to “Anne Arbour”: a bluesy step down the piano scale, backed by the drumbeat of a military march. These demos unravel the band's parallel stories: For die-hard fans, they reveal the shaky process that produced triumphant choruses, the wrong turns that could cost them their shot at the big leagues. For those who, like so many critics, saw every refinement of their sound as a rebuke to punk values, it charts the dark path to a brighter sound, one that would ultimately betray the band in 2002's sluggish and melodramatic follow-up. On a wire.
On its 25th anniversary, Something to write Home leaves a mixed legacy. It started a group of even younger and smarter bands that would go on to define the next decade of emo – you can thank the Get Up Kids for Hellogoodbye's headaches. At the same time, it's a landmark for the band and the genre, a collection of surprisingly powerful vignettes of Midwestern quarter-life performed by a group of deceptively experienced musicians. Upon its release, the record was criticized for sounding too commercial – but if you listened to an early demo of Jimmy Eat World's Clarity as you were getting ready to record your next album, wouldn't you try to step up your game? On “Action & Action,” Pryor may be talking about his own ambitions when he sings, “Overexposure is the key” and then, “I finally found/The right formula.” These demos, where the band tweaks a riff here or a verse moves there, reveal the magic in punk-to-pop alchemy.
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