Motion City Soundtrack – Commit This To Memory

Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This To Memory

From the opening salvos of ‘Attractive Today’ and lead off single ‘Everything Is Alright’ to the heartbreaking leaving note of ‘Hold Me Down’, Motion City Soundtrack (Justin Pierre, Joshua Cain, Jesse Johnson, Matt Taylor and Tony Thaxton) take you through an emotional rollercoaster. 

Informed by lead singer/guitarist Pierre’s well documented problems (I’m not going into it here – just listen to the albums), MCS’s sophomore effort (produced by Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 fame) is pure pop genius. 

Some lines come across as so silly it’s unbelievable, but listen again and they just make sense.  Take the first line heard – “I am wrecked / I am overblown / I am also fed up with the common cold” from ‘Attractive Today’. 

 

It is this “just making sense”, the feeling of connection, of being able to relate with someone else’s words, that has kept Commit This To Memory never very far away from my speakers since its release in the Summer of 2005.  Lines like “I’m a mess, I’m a wreck / I am perfect, and I have learned to accept / all my problems and short comings / Because I am so visceral, yet deeply inept”  (L.G. FUAD) and “Our Hell ends every weekend / But it’s all I have to believe to believe in” (Better Open The Door) resonated with me, and though the worlds another three and some years older, and a very, very different place (for me, in a very, very good way!), they still do. 

 

This is probably the most intelligent, yet accessible; verbose, yet understandable; cynical, yet optimistic; happy, yet melancholic album ever created.