Motion City Soundtrack returned to Union South’s Club 770 last Thursday, Dec. 2 to once again bounce its chunky, undeniably catchy pop-punk classics into the hearts of Madison’s pogoing punk populace.
Fueled By Ramen’s latest up-and-coming act The Academy Is … and Doghouse veterans Limbeck opened the show. But it wasn’t until Tsunami Bomb (the best group by far on the pop-punk label Kung Fu Records) took the stage that the night truly began. The four-person punk outfit turned heads on the last few Vans Warped tours by melting formula pop-punk tunes, busting apart with skilled musicianship, with lead singer Agent M’s frenetic vocal stylings and intelligent lyrics. On stage at 770, the band conducted its business professionally, checking and double-checking the mix while making small talk with the intimately arranged crowd.
When Tsunami Bomb kicked into its set, the group received the kind of adoring reception usually withheld until the headliners. Guitarist Mike Griffen’s solid stream of power-chords glanced across the stage to mercilessly meld into the group’s solid rhythm section, made up of bassist Matt McKenzie and drummer Gabe Lindeman. Agent M’s vocals flattened the crowd, combining the pure angst of X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene (whose unflinching wails opened the flood gates for riot grrrls in the ’90s via Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hannah and others) and Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong. Like Armstrong, Agent M lets her projectile vocal barbs slur and congest into one energetic collection of melodious outburst.
Tsunami Bomb showcased a wealth of new material from its latest Kung Fu Records release, The Definitive Act, which emerged as a natural progression from the band’s debut disc, The Ultimate Escape. The Definitive Act falls into some common sophomore slumps for punk discs (most notably for jumping half-heartedly into such hear-today-gone-tomorrow sounds as imitation screamo) but emerges as an enjoyable listen, due mostly to the band’s instrumental strength and Agent M’s unbeatable delivery.
Although lacking her usual self-harmonization (as heard on the records) from multi-tracked vocals, Agent M’s performance avoided becoming dry as McKenzie and Griffen continually supplied ample backup (when not opting to simply sputter out muted screams). New tracks like “My Machete” and “Jigsaw” careened through melodic punk and light thrash, while the band continually compared their excited Madison crowd to the previous night’s underwhelming gig in Green Bay, praising the hyped kids for their encouragement and support.
The band reached its melodic high points on the new blazer, “Dawn on a Funeral Day,” and closed the show with the brilliant pop punctuation of the group’s crowning achievement thus far, “Not Forever,” a poppy gem about a dismayed protagonist establishing her independence while Agent M rips into her finest melody yet.
Where Tsunami Bomb found its inspiration from Green Day, headlining act Motion City Soundtrack owe a debt to the other ’90s alt-icons of Weezer. The Minneapolis group’s Epitaph debut, I Am The Movie, is a splatterfest of synth-driven pop rock and intimately recounted storylines revolving around botched relationships, dead-end jobs and remembering high school heartbreak.
Unfortunately, Motion City Soundtrack kicked into its set without checking its mix and was overwhelmed by open-mic feedback, overpowering drums and a complete lack of lead singer and guitarist Justin Pierre’s guitar. But by the time the group hit its fourth song, “Don’t Call It A Comeback,” with its vicious swirls of vintage Moog sounds and rapid-fire vocals, the mix had righted itself and Motion City hit a stride that didn’t slow down until the end of the set.
Justin Pierre’s feverish rants about primetime television, prescription medication and the sublime expanses of life beyond the educational tract are stationed perfectly within the band’s poppy punk structure. Pierre’s mental meandering finds sufficient backing in Joshua Cain’s lead guitar, Matthew Taylor’s deft basslines, Tony Thurston’s drumming and Jesse Johnson’s frantic Moog-noodling. Johnson’s live antics are as entertaining as the group’s music, as the stringy keyboardist swatted at the crowd and practically flung his frame into syncopated handstands on his instrument.
The band’s set sounded like a greatest-hits collection, complete with a chorus of kids’ voices echoing Pierre’s words from the mosh. He even let the crowd take over completely for the first few lines of the group’s catchy-as-hell anthem about one post-modern girl’s existential crises, “The Future Freaks Me Out” (“Betty won’t stop listening to modern rock / How she hates to be alone / I try to compensate her lack of love with coffee cake / Ice cream and a bottle of $10 wine”). As a whole, each sardonic narrative sooner or later comes to rest within the gravitational pull of a single lonely protagonist, allowing I Am The Movie to become a cascading downpour of brutal reminiscence and humorous nihilistic tendencies, probably explaining why the album has become one of the most widely enjoyed punk releases of the new millennium.
The 770 gig allowed the band to wind through almost every recorded track it’s put out, from the slew of I Am The Movie zingers like “Shiver,” “Modern Chemistry,” “My Favorite Accident” and the melancholy, stuck-in-a-memory swagger of “Perfect Teeth” (“Bury me in memories of CK1 and tight white tees / Like air guitar in muscle cars with perfect teeth / the way we are”) to new tracks like “When You’re Around,” a previously acoustic number from a split E.P. with Matchbook Romance that sounded as accessible as any radio-punk staple (although littered with flippantly flagrant f-bombs) without selling its soul. “When You’re Around” sounded great as a full-band number, hopefully a premonition of what’s to come on MSC’s forthcoming sophomore album.
