By Sean Moeller

This is not a story of bitterness and feuding, slamming doors and calling people nasty, earmuffable names. But there are elements of that. You can just picture it, can’t you: The Get Up Kids, backstage at the Allstate Arena in Chicago or any other venue on that tour in 2004, Dashboard Confessional singer Chris Carraba’s touchy-feely singing coming through the dressing room walls, loitering in the air with the smell of catering and Rolling Rock and here comes a box of new band T-shirts with lead singer Matt Pryor up front and Jim Suptic and the rest of the Kids are tucked back in the shadows. An uproar ensues and Billy Crudup pulls a shirt from the box and says, “No, no, no, these shirts let you say everything you’ve always wanted to say.”

Most of the above is fictional, paraphrased, etc., but the truth remains that the Get Up Kids—those emo torch-bearers of the heartland who always sounded like they wanted to get out of the heartland while still celebrating its staid suffocation—are so broken (will have been for a year this July) and it wasn’t a pretty break-up.

Pryor got to a point where he couldn’t write anything that didn’t sound like a New Amsterdams song (kinda soft and super pussy—not that it can’t be a good thing) and refused to let any of Suptic’s songs make the cut on the forgettable swan song album, “Guilt Show.” Pryor’s still making those New Amsterdams songs—some of the new ones are good, most of them are not and it makes you think that the band was never better than it was when it was a side project before the main project became indistinguishable from the side project (it gets muddy)—bassist Rob Pope has formed a new buzz band in White Whale and Suptic has Blackpool Lights, a band that throws the line back into the loud, infested waters that the Kids used to wade in.

“It’s a little scary, but after being in the same band for 10 years, with the same people, it’s nice to be writing songs with different people,” Suptic said from the road. “We announced the Get Up Kids were finished a year before we were actually done. We just didn’t want to end our career opening up for Dashboard Confessional, no offense to them. Once we finished, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I had to give it one more shot.

“I’ll always be writing music and I don’t think I ever lost (the desire to tour). I don’t have kids. I just want to be in a loud rock and roll band. We were 18 when we started the Get Up Kids and that was the charm of it. When I listen to ‘Four Minute Mile,’ I think there’s a lot of heart in that record. It’s an honest record.”

Talking about it, you begin to think that Suptic doesn’t wistfully think about all of the GUK records the same way. Things didn’t go south with 2002’s “On A Wire,” as some critics wanted to think they were. The shape-shifting departure from the sound that was the band’s very own and not readily or easily co-opted was explained away as the maturation of the band, a cozy statement that basically meant that they were getting old and the fans were only getting younger. But at least at that time still, Suptic – whose non-battery-operated, but cattle prod-zapped lightning bolts of songs were happily awaited during live performances – was still getting some play on the albums. On “Guilt Show,” a decision by Pryor left Suptic with a doughnut. Not a single one of his songs found its way onto the record, though ironically, the very last song played at the band’s final show at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City was Suptic’s wonderfully juiced up anthem “10 Minutes.”

“I’m just happy that my songs are getting on records again,” Suptic said of now working with former members of The Creature Comforts and Ultimate Fakebook (bassist Brian Everard, drummer Billy Brimblecom and guitarist Thom Hoskins). “It was one of the many reasons why we’re not a band anymore and we never will be ever again. If we weren’t making a lot of money, I wouldn’t have done it as long as I did. I almost quit a number of times. My hands are washed clean of that. It was inevitable.”

Blackpool Lights debut fell-length, “This Town’s Disaster” was released on Tuesday and it’s chock-full of the kinds of songs that Suptic got to clear his throat out on while playing in the Get Up Kids. They rang of exuberance and always made the lights or the person packed in next to you feel a little hotter and sweatier.

“I just think it’s easier with this band,” Suptic said. “I’m used to being in this band. I’ve kind of forgotten about ever having been in the Get Up Kids.”