Review: Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life

January 19th, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

You’d be forgiven for assuming that the dudes in Motion City Soundtrack are a bunch of pussies. Justin Pierre, the frontman, has a sweet, high-pitched voice, and his wacky over-moussed hair suggests an alternate universe Nikki Sixx, post-overdose. The rest of the dudes in the band sort of look like they really enjoy Magic: The Gathering. Two of their records (including this one) have been produced by Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, who is actually a cool dude but loses cred by palling around with king-of-the-douches Tom DeLonge. So, if you possesed only these facts, and maybe had heard a few snippets of the band’s music here and there, you probably wouldn’t be overly impressed or consider them the kind of “serious” music that you pretend to like when you’re talking to girls at hipster bars. But, damnit, Motion City Soundtrack are amazing, and My Dinosaur Life is their best record yet – a fast and thick collection of scathingly honest rock songs executed perfectly by guys that are total experts. It announces, in no uncertain terms, that these planeswalkers are done taking shit.

The most explicit example of this (literally) is the track “@!#?@!,” in which Pierre warns, “You all need to go away, you motherfuckers / You all need to leave me and my homeboys alone.” Shit is real, dawg. But in case you’re not convinced, listen to the other 11 songs, none of which gets nearly as mushy as every song on their last record (Even If It Kills Me), and at least half of which feature heavier riffs and faster tempos than anything in the MCS catalog. “Disappear” and “The Weakends” are both stand-out rockers that get deep (although the latter loses points for its Fall Out Boy-seque), and “Pulp Fiction” and “Skin & Bones” showcase Pierre’s oddball humor and instinctive melodic gifts. Dude is really killing it on this record, BTW – he’s developed a new, super-croony delivery style that elevates an otherwise boilerplate (for these guys) track like first single “Her Words Destroyed My Planet” from MCS-by-numbers to total-boner-extravaganza.

My Dinosaur Life is a coming-out party for a band that has refined its formula, charted out strengths and weaknesses, and made a really great record that plays by its own rules and includes a good number of surprises even for longtime fans. Lyrically, Pierre is in fine form; he sounds nowhere near as defeated as he did on Even If It Kills Me – this dude is ready to rumble, packing hundred of words into dense narratives and then letting them cascade out in that beautiful voice, never losing control for a second. He’d actually make an excellent rapper, probably. The band kicks up dust behind him, relying less on big keyboard hooks than on hard-charging guitar riffs, and this makes a big difference – Motion City Soundtrack finally sound like He-Men. This is the kind of record that Alkaline Trio made with Good Mourning, that Fall Out Boy made with Infinity On High: these boys have grown up, and My Dinosaur Life is as thematically deep as the hooks are wide. I hope it’s a hit (and that MCS’s new tenure on a major label goes better than most of their emo peers’) – Motion City Soundtrack deserve to be huge, and this is the record that should do it.