A trip to the record store used to be spontaneous. I would usually walk out with a small stack from bands I had never heard of before, or at least albums I had never listened to. These days, I’m far more intentional with my budget. I have a to-buy list that is constantly revisited and revised with repeated listens, organized by some careful calculus of how much I enjoy it and how inexpensively I can get the record.
Sometimes though, the old tinge of spontaneity will spark again, and I’ll take a calculated risk. In this case, I had been familiar with Foals for many years—Holy Fires still gets a decent amount of play time, but I’ve never ventured into the rest of their catalog. At least, until I found a sealed copy of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost—Part 1 (a title borrowed from the warning screen from the original Legend of Zelda) at a local shop for a price I couldn’t ignore. And as gambles sometimes do, this one paid off.
Working for a music site, I’m constantly inundated with press releases and review submissions. After a while, it all starts to bleed together, like a never-ending Pandora station with messed up seeds that plays in the background.
The seeds of my rediscovery of the Get Up Kids were planted in 2019. I was writing for a music review site, and the site owner messaged me asking if I was ever into the Get Up Kids, because they had a new album coming out and he needed someone to review it. I said that I listened to them a little bit, but wasn’t a superfan. He said, “that’s better than anyone else,” and sent me Problems. 
Over the years, I have stated publicly and often that I missed the Get Up Kids when I was in the throes of my emo phase. Most publicly, on the 
