Indie rock group the New Amsterdams originated when Get Up Kids vocalist and guitarist Matthew Pryor launched the act as a side project. Pryor kept reshaping his personal feelings through a framework of buoyant pop melodies. The initial lineup alongside Pryor featured drummer Jake Cardwell, guitarist Alex Brahl, and Get Up Kids bassist Robert Pope. After establishing the Get Up Kids in 1996, Pryor sought an alternative channel for his bare melodies that would separate them from the emo tag linked to his primary band. Employing gritty acoustic textures and shifting lyrical perspectives, the New Amsterdams delivered their first record, Never You Mind, during autumn 2000.
Two years afterward, Pryor stepped away from his bandmates to cut a second album that he performed and recorded entirely alone. Para Toda Vida presented a closer portrait of Pryor and credited Alex Brahl with production duties. In 2003, Worse for the Wear appeared with brothers Robert and Ryan Pope contributing bass and percussion. Pryor began mapping out the next album that same autumn, only to depart for a Get Up Kids tour. Isolation and distress during those dates shaped many of the new songs around an unsettled, somber chapter in his life. Once touring obligations ended and the material remained unfinished, he commenced writing sessions with Bill Belzer and Eric McCann in September 2004. The fresh setting proved far more optimistic than Pryor’s prior circumstances, and that shift registered in the songs themselves.
Killed or Cured reached completion, yet a final Get Up Kids tour postponed its release until the following year. During the intervening period the New Amsterdams began composing fresh material, Dustin Kinsey joined the lineup, and the members chose to finish the project already underway. Ultimately Killed or Cured was set aside without scheduled release, though select tracks remained downloadable from the band’s website. The group finally unveiled Story Like a Scar in April 2006 and followed it in 2007 with At the Foot of My Rival. Pryor chose to disband the New Amsterdams in 2013, closing the chapter with the act’s seventh and last album, Outroduction.
