Motion City Soundtrack | Panic StationsEmpty Bottle Evenings

Sep222015September 22, 2015September 22, 2015No Commentby Bake

Motion City Soundtrack | Panic Stations

Posted in Music

Motion City Soundtrack’s last album sucked. And as someone who backed them up with each change in sound and record label over the years until Go came out I don’t feel bad about saying it. The best songs were “Circuits and Wires”, a track actually recorded for the previous album, and their first single “True Romance”, never a great sign to lead off off with the best knowing listeners won’t make it through the whole album. I went to their tour supporting that album and they graciously played only a couple songs off it. Even they must have known somewhere deep down that it just wasn’t as good as their previous work. But I haven’t given up on the band. Something about their Moog-based, punkish sound and their neurotic & personal lyrics get to my punkish and neurotic soul.

SO I decided to give Panic Stations a listen and see what MCS came up with this time around. And it’s definitely an improvement. I’ve been struggling to get a hold of this album for the last few days since its release. as it is definitely one of those albums that needs to grows on you. It’s not as free and catchy as Commit This to Memory or Even If It Kills Me, incorporating more of a “mature” sound. I understand that is often synonymous with “boring” and it’s quite possible some listeners will find this album as whole that way. But the new record sounds like a band that aged out of the pop-punk genre that it never truly identified with. Not that Motion City Soundtrack doesn’t evoke bands from similar genres. On Panic Stations in particular, there is an obvious likeness to Futures-era Jimmy Eat World on tracks like “I Can Feel You” and the album closer “Days Will Run Away”. Meanwhile their opening track “Anything At All” sounds like the Gaslight Anthem’s “Senor and the Queen” with Moog synthesizer and different lyrics.

I can appreciate MCS slightly adjusting their sound instead of entirely revamping it. It’s not like I was expecting them to release a dirty blues album. I should just be happy that they didn’t go country or more plausibly electronic. They experimented a little with electronic beats on the last album and it was terrible. Actually everything that they tried to experiment with on Go was a failure. On Panic Stations, they’ve succeeded in creating a cohesive album that sounds like they’ve remembered where their sweet spot is. The flip side is that some of the tracks sort to blend together which is not going to help its case for not being “boring”. Where does this album fit on the spectrum of “every song sounding the same” vs “a messy collection of songs more disjointed than a b-sides money grab”? Solidly in the middle, although leaning to the former.

Thankfully, most of the tracks are upbeat enough that even if this album doesn’t go down as one of the most memorable, it will still be enjoyable. While most of the lyrics are still on the sad side, Panic Stations is full of the kind of songs that should do well live. While listening to it at home you may not be jumping out of your chair and clapping, but your head will probably nod for just under 40 minutes. I don’t think Motion City Soundtrack will blow up with this album, but they will probably win back some of their old fans that tapped out after the last two offerings. And if they’re not too old to listen to music by now, they’ll probably grab some Jimmy Eat World fans too.