Motion City Soundtrack's Go

Okay, so the bad news about Motion City Soundtrack’s new album is that their best song is still “My Favorite Accident.” The good news is they’ve released their best album since Commit This to Memory. Too many times on Even If It Kills Me and My Dinosaur Life (though admittedly, much more frequently on Even If It Kills Me), the band had this sickness (and I listened through those two albums again to make sure I still felt this way about them) of coming up with an amazing sounding verse or a super catchy chorus and pairing it with a chorus that lacks punch or a verse I can’t bear to listen to because it’s so lame. That is gone on Go. And I’ll admit that several of the songs had the potential to be that way, but it seems as though they were able to get past that. What follows is my track-by-track analysis of Motion City Soundtrack’s Go:

The album’s opener, “Circuits and Wires,” was a song that almost didn’t make it onto the album. Written during the time of My Dinosaur Life, this song is better than nearly any song that actually made it onto that album. It has a great energy to it and already shows that it beats the curse from Even If It Kills Me [henceforth referred to as the “Kills-Me Curse”] of not being able to piece together a good chorus with a good verse. This song was the right choice for an opening track, as it gets the listener involved early in the excitement of the album.

The lead single from the album, “True Romance” starts off with the chorus, performed with just vocals and an acoustic guitar, before going into a verse reminiscent of the way “Everything is Alright” (off of Commit This to Memory) is constructed. “True Romance” is handled well instrumentally by the band. If the refrain’s vocals were performed over a less interesting and engaging arrangement, this song could have fallen prey to the Kills-Me Curse too. I do have to say that they should have gone with bigger instrumentation in the refrain following the bridge though. The bridge sets it up so well for it, but instead they go into the normal refrain.

The lyrics to the third track, “Son of a Gun,” are nothing special, but the band makes the song sound really good with the way the instrumentation blends with the vocals (melody and harmony). For a softer song, MCS nails this one. The opening really reminds me of Okkervil River.

I was so happy when I heard “Timelines,” the second single off of this album, because it was this track that made me feel like they’d broken the Kills-Me Curse. The layered vocals work again in their favor on this track. The song starts out with such great energy. I’m glad it was chosen as a single.

Track five, “Everyone Must Die,” is the ballad of the album. If you are an avid MCS fan who listened to this album from start to finish, you’d be surprised that “Son of a Gun” wasn’t the ballad of the album until you heard this song. It’s quite beautiful, and they use a real strings section, which the band members were particularly excited about.

“The Coma Kid” has an interesting idea in its lyrics. It’s a fairly simple song in structure (same chords throughout), but they put enough variance in the way they play it not to bore the listener, which is extremely important.

Motion City Soundtrack is experimenting with time signatures! The verse of track seven is in seven, and it works fantastically. The lyrics to the song are about this creature called a boxelder that, as a group, infest a tree because they need the tree to live, but in doing that, they kill the tree. Justin Pierre, the lead singer, likened this to a relationship, and that’s where he got the idea for the song. Interesting imagery. I don’t really need the “HEY, BOXELDER, TAKE ME WITH YOU” at the end, but oh well.

“The Worst Is Yet to Come” is a great song. The verse is so bare it just oozes emotion, and the chorus is executed so well instrumentally and vocally. One of the more up-tempo songs on the album, Motion City Sountrack succeeds in making a song that would be fun to drive to.

The next track, “Bad Idea,” was originally intended for Commit This to Memory, which is, as you know by now, the last album of theirs that I liked. They’ve said that they never felt like they could get this song right, but have revisited it for each album since. They finally reworked the instrumentation for it, and got it to work. I wish they’d only taken the time to do that with almost everything else they released between Commit and Go [end rant].

“Happy Anniversary” is probably my favorite song on the album right now, as it’s just a downright incredible performance. Justin Pierre has said that he kept breaking down every time he tried to sing it during recording, because it was so emotional for him. (Side note: I totally got goosebumps from it just now). I’d say that this song is a stronger, more grown up version of “Autographs and Apologies” from I Am the Movie.

Having been ready for “Happy Anniversary” to close the album (à la “Hold Me Down”), I was pleasantly surprised to hear “Floating Down the River.” This song rocks. “Caught beneath the weight of it all” is such a beautifully performed line, and the band made a good decision in letting that line happen nearly every time without any backing instrumentation.

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Overall, Motion City Soundtrack’s fifth album, Go, is a much softer album than that which fans of the band are used to. There is a lot of acoustic or non-distorted electric guitar on this album, and it works really well for the songs they’ve written, which are slower-paced anyway. Personally, I felt like most of the music of Even If It Kills Me sucked, and most of the lyrics of My Dinosaur Life sucked, so this album was a welcome effort from a band that I absolutely loved in the middle of the 2000s. Whether you agree or not, I’d love to hear from you! Just post a comment below.

Go is available in three formats.
Standard Edition: the 11 track album as a compact disc.
Digital Edition: a high-quality mp3 download with three bonus tracks (“Bottom Feeder,” “Give Up/Give In,” and “Alcohol Eyes”)
Vinyl Edition: the 11 track album on vinyl.

To buy Go, visit http://www.bluecollardistro.com/motioncitysoundtrack/