The Get Up Kids Kick Up the Emotion

Is emo necessary? Not the music, but the word, which seems like a dubious category when the very best bands branded “emo” tend to distance themselves from the term itself. The Get Up Kids are like that, making passionate, melodic rock that owes much to the examples of the Replacements and the Lemonheads, among many others.

This stuff used to be known as indie rock. And equally (at least) emo-tive music can be heard from the contemporary likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. But whatever the label, the Get Up Kids epitomized the most promising side of an accelerating movement Sunday in the first of three sold-out nights at the House of Blues (following a sold-out, unannounced show at the Troubadour on Saturday).

The quintet, which emerged from Kansas City in 1994, opened with “Let the Reigns Go Loose,” a yearning, dramatic track from the band’s newest album, “On a Wire.” Here and throughout the night, the band revealed noticeably more muscle on stage than in the studio, without losing any of the melodic richness of the recordings.

Singer Matt Pryor slashed at his big Rickenbacker guitar, legs planted far apart, as the band stirred real excitement both onstage and in the crowd below. It could also be heard in the band’s restless noodling between songs, as if a mere set list was hardly enough to satisfy the group.

Lead guitarist Jim Suptic also sang a couple of songs, but there was an added edge to Pryor’s vocals even during the most melodic passages, as he sang lyrics that explored endless layers of self-doubt. “You’re four years overdue,” he sang. “What kind of role model are you?”

The Get Up Kids re-created the sound and sentiment of their music with a blend of polish and spontaneity in a tight, 80-minute set. The band’s lineage may owe much to punk rock, but the expressive piano and organ melodies beneath the guitars often edged it closer to Rufus Wainwright than Joe Strummer.

Later in the show, Pryor noted that the night marked the first live rock experience of his baby daughter, and then described one song as “what you can learn about parenting by not acting like your parents.”

Some of the night’s best material suggested the same blend of memorable rock melodies and dark thoughts as Blink-182’s “Adam’s Song,” about teen suicide. It’s easily Blink’s most meaningful song, but the Get Up Kids seem to have dozens of them.

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The Get Up Kids, with Rhett Miller and Hot Rod Circuit, at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, tonight, 7:30 p.m. Sold out. (323) 848-5100.