Worse for the Wear

The New Amsterdams began as a more easygoing side project for Matthew Pryor, frontman for the Kansas emo outfit the Get-Up Kids. In recent years, though, the Get-Up Kids have become pretty damn easygoing themselves, making the Amsterdams a means for Pryor to merely release more music under a different name. Not that this is a bad thing. Early Get-Up songs saw Pryor vent his depression as aggression, and not always convincingly. But with songs like “From California” and “Poison in the Ink,” he seems more comfortable to stew in a warm mix of piano, acoustic guitars, and hangdog rhythms. While the results often recall the Counting Crows, “Hover Near Fame” (which sounds like it was written after a night spent in Manhattan watching Paris Hilton knock back dirty martinis) pointedly skewers the kind of self-important preening of which the Crows themselves are often guilty. Touches of banjo, pedal steel guitar, and an array of organs and keyboards lend depth to the sound, at once cushioning Pryor’s barbed musings and driving them home.