Motion City Soundtrack
Motion City Soundtrack delivers its most accomplished effort yet

By Andy Argyrakis

Retro rockers The Cars, geek pioneers Weezer, irreverent punkers Blink-182 and satirical power poppers Fountains of Wayne may not be the most frequently linked collective, but the seemingly divergent worlds find common ground under the umbrella of Motion City Soundtrack. The alt-punk outfit recently released its third CD Even If It Kills Me, which not only hints at all the aforementioned influences, but benefits from their help in one format or another.

Though the Minneapolis-bred quintet first rose to fame in 2003 with the bubbly I Am the Movie and a subsequent tour with Blink-182, it evolved towards more palatable pop radio fair on the follow-up Commit This to Memory (produced by Mark Hoppus, bassist for those one-time tour mates). While both projects helped the band branch out to a widespread American audience, the current Even If It Kills Me is the record the band always wanted to make.

“The only way to really be a band is to not focus on anything specifically and just do what you want to do,” suggests front man Justin Pierre during a cell phone chat from a Washington D.C. tour stop. “I had a conversation with Mark [Hoppus] that reaffirmed the idea that once you worry and try to [contrive] a certain sound, you’re either going to fail or become a caricature of yourself. I’m not trying to compare us to Blink, but their early records were a lot different compared to their last record, which I though was their best work. And I don’t even think our new project is that different, though there are a few more orchestral elements and more electronic drum beats, plus we’re looking back to the late ’80s and early ’90s indie scene with bands like Pavement, Sonic Youth and Jawbox.”

To capture that fairly wide swath, the gang employed two separate production teams: Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger with Girls Against Boys’ Eli Janney and The Cars’ Ric Ocasek with engineer Chris Shaw (reunited for the first time since working on Weezer’s seminal 1994 self-titled sessions). Though one might expect each production style to jump out of the ensuing 13 tracks, it’s actually quite difficult to decipher who’s behind the boards. “Before we had the record done, we were playing the songs for people and they truly couldn’t tell who we worked on what,” verifies Pierre. “We thought that was a good sign, plus it wasn’t like one team outshined the other.”

While the resulting record is harmonious from start to finish, the processes of execution were completely different depending on the collaborators. “Adam and Eli had notebooks full of ideas from when we sent them our demos and they really bounced a lot of ideas off each other,” explains Pierre. “They were far enough removed from the writing of the music to have an objective point of view, so they really dissected, added and subtracted everything until everyone’s ideas were exhausted.”

Ocasek wasn’t originally on the band’s dance card, though he came into the mix after popping by the studio. “We stopped recording and went upstairs to meet each other, but all of us in the band were scared out of our mind,” Pierre remembers. “He was dressed all in black with his [trademark] glasses and he definitely had a presence. But we hit it off and eventually made it into the studio with him, though it took us a little while before we figured him out. He has a dry and hilarious sense of humor, plus a really old school way about him, but it was so awesome. I think Ric and Chris have a specific method in which they record, which included using their own guitars and synths since they already knew how those sounded. On ‘Even If It Kills Me,’ I wound up using the same guitar [Weezer’s] Rivers [Cuomo] used on ‘Say It Ain’t So.’”

Outside of that emotive, momentum building finale, the disc’s standouts also include the artful pop of “Hello Helicopter,” the vibrant knob twirler “Antonia” and the emotive piano ballad “The Conversation.” Pierre also cites the quirkily constructed, instrumentally varied “Last Night” as the band’s favorite thus far on this winter’s expansive mtvU Tour. 

“The whole trip’s been awesome, especially because more and more people are becoming familiar with the new songs,” he adds. “Metro Station starts off the night with some cool ’80s dance shit, Anberlin comes out a lot harder to really strong response from the kids and Mae’s on after them, reminding me in a weird way of Jimmy Eat World meets Hum. And then it ends on an awful note with us because we f--- it all up!”

Tour Dates

12/6     Las Vegas, NV                       House of Blues
12/8     Salt Lake City, UT                  In the Venue
12/9     Denver, CO                             Fillmore Auditorium
12/11   Saint Louis, MO                     The Pageant
12/13   Cincinnati, OH                        Bogart’s
12/14   Cleveland, OH                                    Agora
12/15   Chicago, IL                             House of Blues
12/16   Chicago, IL                             House of Blues