Justin Pierre - Guitar, Vox Joshua Cain - Guitar, Vox Matt Taylor - Bass, Vox Tony Thaxton - Drums, Vox Jesse Johnson - Keyboards/Moog
If you want to hear that MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK is made up of ex-members of some formerly famous groups, forget it. Unless the names of their high school bands mean anything to you, who they are and where they came from will ring no familiar tones, until now.
"My childhood was basically spent riding ramps and listening to Run DMC & the Beastie Boys,” explains Justin Pierre, lead singer & lyricist for MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK. "Then there was radio for a short while, I quickly realized that wasn't going to help me find great bands. I knew that I had to go to shows and read articles in magazines which were outside of the mainstream. So I did, and found artists like Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, Superchunk, The Flaming Lips, and Mercury Rev." After high school, Justin hooked up with guitarist Josh Cain and resigned from their mercenary efforts in various local bands to unite, not unlike the Wonder Twins, to become a musical conduit for a greater force of rock.
MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK recorded a 7" around 1999, issued some slight works on local labels after that and went through a handful of line up changes. After years of plugging away, Justin & Josh finally found a line up they were confident in; keyboardist Jesse Johnson, drummer Tony Thaxton, & bass player Matthew Taylor. There was, however, one problem. Tony & Matt resided in Richmond, VA. After flying back & forth grew old, Tony & Matt chose heads and the coin turned up tails, so they picked up their belongings for the cold winters of Minneapolis, MN. Now that the line up & location were solidified, the band elected to spend their own money and take their music to Lawrence, KS, putting it in the capable hands of Ed Rose (Get Up Kids, Ultimate Fakebook, The Anniversary), who burnished and honed the MCS fury into I Am The Movie, the remarkable album you now hold in your hands.
As for the approach to the song writing process, Justin gives this perspective, "I think of a persons head as a projector that is constantly viewing and creating home movies of their past, present and future. Not necessarily what happened, but how they remember or envision things happening, a combination of reality and daydream. Lyrically, I really like those that stay with you over time, lyrics that haunt you either in a good or a bad way. Lyrics with humor and tragedy are the best. Some of my favorite lyricists are people or groups who also write fairly kick-ass melodies." Josh adds, "We write serious songs that are kinda funny in a Todd Solondz sort of way."
The origins of all MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK works have a wide set of bookends. Justin explains, "I listen to a lot of lounge & techno music. Matt and I are the only ones who listen to metal and 80's hair bands. Josh is the only one who can stomach Steve Albini. Tony's really into Huey Lewis and Jesse's favorite artist of all time is Elvis Costello. None of us are even remotely interested in these specific examples of each others' taste, yet we get along well enough to write the way we do. We like the idea of having 127 crayons to draw with rather than the standard 10 that come in a box of crayola."
After recording I Am The Movie, the band picked up where they left off, spending endless hours banging out live show after live show. This, oddly enough, initially led the band to be better known by rabid basement-show going kids in urban enclaves across the country rather than the taste-mongers of their hometown of Minneapolis, MN. This naturally led to record labels, agents, & managers poking their noses in MCS business. Not in any real hurry to make that next step, the band continued to "do their thing", waiting for the right situation to present itself. As in life, patience paid off and Brett Gurewitz and his Epitaph family came knocking.
With the record label situation and full length record completed, the members of MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are back in the van and will be in your city soon. That said, it is important to take a step back and understand this, what distinguishes MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK is although their music by definition is loud rock n' roll, it evidences a greater concern for harmonic flow than any band you can think of. Bursting at the seams, "I Am The Movie" flails and furls itself between the melody lines. Those who question how the group's record will translate to a live environment will discover that the MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK live experience is easily comparable to the album. The band has cemented its ferocious and ill-disciplined live show. They will remind you of whatever you have ever loved about music, and transmits it's message of pure, earnest, Midwestern energy, directly.
That's a lot to look forward to, but you know where to start.
Source: http://www.epitaph.com
