No 'Guilt' in liking Get Up Kids' latest

The Get Up Kids are in an interesting position with their fourth album, Guilt Show. Like most emo bands, there are one or two albums which define the group, then there's the "hey, we're more than pop punk" album (in this case, 2002's On a Wire), and then where do they go? Guilt Show plays like a compilation of all the styles which have been experimented with over the years. The opener, "Man of Conviction" is punk enough to be on the first album, while "Holy Roman" could have easily been a song on lead singer Matt Pryor's piano rock side project, The New Amsterdams. \nWe have seen a lot of emo bands put out "mature" albums this year, as both Blink-182 and Saves the Day put out stuff that left some fans wondering where their band went. TGUK wisely leave the experimenting to a minimum, where On a Wire had a few great songs, the rest were forgettable attempts to write retro brit-pop. Guilt Show finds Pryor et al focusing on the songs themselves rather than the style, thus coming off much more consistent. Almost all the songs are uptempo with no "I'll Catch You"-style ballads. Emo, pop-punk, whatever label you want; this is good rock 'n' roll.