Motion City Soundtrack

“Don’t Call It a Comeback” isn’t just the name of a song off Motion City Soundtrack’s 2003 debut, I Am The Movie, it’s also an apt way to summarize the band’s mission statement. During Motion City Soundtrack’s initial run from 1997 - 2016, the Minneapolis-based group released six celebrated albums, toured the world countless times and achieved gold status for their hit single “Everything Is Alright.” After taking a three year hiatus, the band—vocalist/guitarist Justin Pierre, guitarist Joshua Cain, bassist Matt Taylor, keyboardist Jesse Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton—started performing live again in 2019, but even the most optimistic fans didn’t necessarily expect a follow-up to 2015’s Panic Stations. “When we started conceptualizing the idea for this record, I was thinking about what we loved about doing this originally,” Cain explains. The result is The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, an album that sees the band transmuting the last decade of life experiences into the most catchy songs of their career.

Some of these songs were originally conceived during the making of Panic Stations, such as the first single “She Is Afraid.” However it took some time and perspective for the songs to finally come together in their final form. “I love the opening riff of “She Is Afraid,” I knew it was one of my favorite things the first time I heard Josh play it,” Pierre says of the distorted guitar bends that immediately set the tone for this alt-rock anthem. “Sometimes we can get caught up with the idea of if a song is punk rock enough; we realized that for the song to be a success we need to have a great time playing it,” Cain adds when asked about the mindset behind Motion City Soundtrack’s first new collection of songs in a decade. That feeling of carefree exuberance is evident all over The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World from the instantly infectious palm-muted power of “You Know Who The Fuck We Are” to the motivational bent of “Things Like This,” the latter of which features vocals from Deanna Belos of Sincere Engineer.

Over the course of their career Motion City Soundtrack have worked with legendary producers ranging from Ric Ocasek to Mark Hoppus, but for The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World they reunited with Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s) at the legendary Chicago studio, Electrical Audio. “Working with Sean was really comforting because he’s so laid back and I love that he’s a drummer, so he’s obsessed with drum sounds,” Taylor explains. “He’s super open to experimenting and it’s like hanging out with a friend you feel comfortable around.” That sense of experimentation is especially evident on the atmospheric, bass-driven “Mi Corazón,” which sees the band embracing their post-hardcore influences without sacrificing the keen sense of melody that has always defined their sound. “I don’t like hearing the demos with fake drums because I’ll get those parts in my head, so I literally showed up to the sessions not even hearing the songs,” says Thaxton, whose improvised creativity led to some of the album’s most memorable moments. “I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable doing that and trusting myself,” he adds.

Fully realizing the potential of their music without overthinking the execution is the secret to The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World’s success—and it’s evident on “Particle Physics,” a song co-written with and featuring Fall Out Boy guitarist/vocalist Patrick Stump. “We met Patrick in the early days of Fall Out Boy and had more recently talked about having him contribute to this album,” Cain explains about the song’s origin. “He told us he had an idea running through his head about a song Motion City Soundtrack would have written but haven’t written yet. It was this little riff and chorus to ‘Particle Physics’ and even though it was just part of the song, the vibe was completely there.” From there the rest of the band scaffolded the verses and bridge around that section while Pierre added his signature brand of pop culture-influenced lyrics, which reference everything from the indie band That Dog to celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks. The result is a track that sounds distinctly like Motion City Soundtrack while still featuring one of rock’s most recognizable voices.

However the most impressive aspect of The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is the fact that instead of relying solely on nostalgia and album anniversary tours, Motion City Soundtrack continue to experiment outside their comfort zone. In that spirit, another standout song is the moody meditation “Your Days Are Numbered,” which features an impassioned cameo from Citizen’s Mat Kerekes that Pierre describes as “fucking brutal.” “ It's a very interesting thing to feel like we made the most important record of our career this late in the game,” Johnson says when asked about how he views the album in the context of the group’s discography. “ You might have some callbacks to some older stuff but it wasn’t intentional, it was because we were just being ourselves.”

Motion City Soundtrack will be the first ones to tell you that The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World wasn’t necessarily an easy album to make, but now that it’s finished it’s a document of the last ten years that shows them growing as people alongside their music. “I think that if you look at a lot of our past records, it’s about ‘What’s wrong? What am I not getting right? Why do I feel fucking crazy? Why can’t I figure this out’… and I figured it out,” Pierre admits. “It’s  almost like I felt I didn’t have an identity [in the past] and now by working through the hard stuff, I know who I am.” That sense of self-discovery is mirrored by the music, so when the final track fades out with just acoustic guitar and Pierre’s vocals it may be the conclusion of the album, but it’s the beginning of another chapter for Motion City Soundtrack’s collective journey.