Blackpool Lights

It's a good thing the Get Up Kids quit when they did, what with melodic emo's eventual exile into self-parodying obsolescence. With their legacy firmly in place, the Kids could have vindicated all the uber-indie naysayers and phoned in a series of mediocre latter-day offerings. Instead the act opted to get out while the getting was good (2005). A year or so before that, perhaps sensing that the first wave of emo had run its course, guitarist Jim Suptic formed Blackpool Lights, an outfit that took a much more conventional rock approach. Specializing in the artless, earnest, hook-laden brand of pop rock favored by so many of the Get Up Kids' former emo and hardcore peers, Blackpool Lights has arrived at a sound that mates Pleased to Meet Me-era Replacements with early John Mellencamp (when "Cougar" was still part of his name). Not surprisingly, considering that he made a career out of writing decidedly un-cynical music, Suptic's songs come across as sincere without the sincerity seeming like some sort of fashionable pose.