Editorial: Motion City Soundtrack was Love at First Sound

Motion City Soundtrack

On the evening of January 18th, 2010, I sat in my parents’ basement. It wasn’t a proud time in my life; having gone through a rough patch in my life, I had moved back in with my parents and was starting to find success in sales. It wasn’t where I’d planned to find myself at 27, but that night I sat staring feverishly at my computer screen. As the time flashed 12:00, and the calendar changed, I hit “Download” for Motion City Soundtrack’s mainstream debut My Dinosaur Life.

This band was a gem I discovered after I’d stumbled upon Fall Out Boy, their debut including the song “Chicago Was So Two Years Ago” which featured MCS’s Justin Courtney Pierre. On a whim (having guided my decision to purchase FOB’s album as well), I picked up the album I Am the Movie.

And oh. My. God. It was love at first sound.

It wasn’t just the sound, but how the lyrics hit. In songs including drunken debauchery, as Pierre croons:

You said we were an accident,
With accidents you’ll never know
what could have been,
So we were an accident,
You’ll always be my favorite one…

If no one was a fan of this genre during this time, the lyrical content was pretty rife with images of violence aimed at women. Yeah, everyone gets mad, buddy. But let’s deal with the emotions behind that and not be cute, without the “e.” This was just the “I’m kinda messed up, and I’m not sure how to ask for help” someone like me needed.

It was during the making of their follow up, Commit this to Memory, that it came to light Pierre was an alcoholic. In stories from Alternative Press (come on, pretend you didn’t know I had a subscription), it was revealed that his drinking had become so bad his bandmates had physically assaulted him. With the help of Epitaph Records founder, and Bad Religion guitarist, Brett Gurewitz, Pierre started down the road to sobriety.

Hey, I’m an alcoholic in recovery. I’m approaching eight years of sobriety, and knowing someone who seemed to feel a certain way about the world that I did, was self-medicating like I was, really was an eye-opener. It helped guide me to sobriety. And Pierre’s relapse helped me stay there.

MCS’s third release, Even if it Kills Me, was a bit of a departure from their previous sound. While still implementing the same instrumentation, notably the catchy drum riffs of Tony Thaxton and frenetic synths of Jesse Johnson, it was far more mellow. Part might be due to their choice of producers, the Cars’ Ric Ocasek and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, perhaps through maturity, but I felt it also demonstrated the next stage in sobriety.

Aside from everything feeling like it slows down, there’s a bit of a fog. Your brain is now trying to adjust without whatever chemical it was in the habit of being inundated with, there’s a period of adjustment. The same is true of everyday chemicals like caffeine, nicotine, or sugar. If someone is smoking a pack of cigarettes a day while drinking overly-sugared energy drink to disguise the taste, discontinuing those things will leave them feeling something terrible.

And this is marked all over Pierre’s lyrics. Their single “Broken Heart,” their first to receive major rotation on formerly music-related television, reads like someone trying to remember an important statement. It runs in the same verse-chorus-verse styling of any other song, but the lyrics change. The same chorus is never repeated verbatim the three times it’s heard. The melody doesn’t change, just the words. An odd characteristic of a song that helped launch them into the mainstream, one that has a recipe that maintains simple, but repetitive.

It was during this time that Pierre relapsed. Struggling to find the right words to place together, he fell back into drinking in the hopes of finding the creative spark that seemed to be missing. Whether he found success or failure, he realized he needed more help and confessed to his bandmates. So he got help. To date, he has remained sober.

I had always loved this album more than any of their others as I felt it was absolutely the soundtrack to the chaos in my head. I recognized Pierre’s struggle, because it’s a constant one in sobriety. As Pierre likely did, I have had many nights where I romanticize what the relationship was like between my drinking and how it made me feel. I remember the good feelings, the thoughts being turned off, or at least muted. I could unclench my jaw.

Their major label debut, the one I waited up all night for, was then absolutely the next phase; the success. Nothing feels better than some time under your belt with sobriety; each day becomes “this is the longest I’ve been sober,” you feel productive, conscious, no longer a burden to others. Pierre’s first words in the opening track, “Worker Bee,” are

It’s been a good year, a good new beginning,
I’m through with the old school, so let’s commence the winning,
I’ve been a good little worker bee,
I deserve a gold star…

Returning to Mark Hoppus, who produced “Commit This to Memory,” the album is poppy, energetic, half confessional (par for the course), and half a promise to get better. It’s hopeful, it’s anxious, but it’s the natural smile after years of faking it. This album earned ink in my skin.

It also stands to mention that drummer Tony Thaxton had gone through some significant surgery on his arm and had to write his drum parts to not hurt himself while recording. You’d have no clue by the sounds of it. Just listen to the opening of “Her Words Destroyed My Planet.”

Their following two albums, while released through Epitaph since Warner Music dropped them, was controlled almost entirely by the band. A perhaps more polished version of their original style, they still found hooks, but gained more attention in the indie scene. “Panic Stations,” their first without drummer Tony Thaxton (replaced by Claudio Rivera of Saves the Day) and last release before disbanding in 2016, was produced in a more unique way than other acts typically record.

In modern music, songs you hear on the radio, the parts are recorded individually; layered, one atop another, until the parts flesh out the whole song. With live bands, it typically starts with the drummer, then the guitars, various other instruments, and voice either last, or close to last. They did the whole thing together, live, in the studio. They wanted to replicate the vibe they had playing live, and so they opted to record the way artists of the past did before modern technology took the place of analog recording. Or at least an alternative. At the very least, it saved them some significant studio time, finishing production in two weeks.

I was sad to see them split, sadder still I missed them on their farewell AND REUNION tours (thanks, 2020). But there’s obviously been murmurs coming from the group. They released a song that had originally been recorded for the Twilight movies, “Crooked Ways.” The series author, Stephenie Meyer, had actually written a blog post to brag about it. Images on their individual Instagram pages seem to suggest they’re in the studio recording something. I’m hopeful for what comes from them, and hope is probably the best thing one could ask for during these times.


RELATED: Review: ‘Psycho Ape!’ is an A-Peeling Tribute to Troma Films

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.