Motion City Soundtrack Buy More Keyboards And Hunt For Roadkill
Friday November 16, 2007 @ 05:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Motion City Soundtrack

Motion City Soundtrack's latest album is about girls, but singer/lyricist Justin Pierre swears that it wasn't really intentional.

"I had a lot of trouble writing this record," Pierre says of the synth-pop quintet's third album, Even If It Kills Me. "I sort of found out afterwards that I was in this weird place.

"The songs were all about loss and failed relationships, and I was in a relationship at the time that I didn't know how to look at as a downward spiral. We broke up towards the end of the writing. After that, it all kind of made sense. It's like my brain knew what was going on but I wasn't able to see it until after it happened.

"I think when I was younger I'd be embarrassed to say, 'I write songs about girls.' But I'm getting older and more comfortable with myself. It's funny because on the first record, 'My Favorite Accident' was about a girl, and I swore after that that I wouldn't do that anymore. Moral of the story: Avoid using words like 'always' and 'never.'"

Even If It Kills Me could be called the sound of an "older, more comfortable" Motion City Soundtrack. Though the band's way with a hook hasn't diminished, and the chugging guitars, ornamental synth whine and Pierre's trademark wail are all present, it all seems a little less manic on the new album, which features guest vocal spots by Max Bemis (Say Anything), Rachel Minton (Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer) and Shawn Harris (The Matches). Pierre says the band — who feature Tony Thaxton, Jesse Johnson, Matt Taylor and Josh Cain — became a much more efficient five-headed beast over the course of writing the record.

"We understand this weird language we have, the five of us together. We're learning that it's more important to eliminate instruments and sounds as to add them. We focus more on the songs than on the album or an idea. We're five voices, and it's always good to have five people, because then you always have a majority."

The band split production duties between the team of Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne) and Eli Janney (Girls Against Boys), and Cars frontman-turned-producer Ric Ocasek. Janney had been a member of the Motion City camp for years, and the band's admiration of Schlesinger's work with his band made the pairing "a match made in heaven," Pierre says. They might have needed that measure of comfort in the studio to better wrap their brains around working with the famously intense Ocasek.

"When Ric works on a project, he apparently doesn't listen to anything else while he's working on it so that he can focus on that 100 per cent," Pierre says of recording with Ocasek at New York City's Electric Ladyland studios. "At first, I was really nervous and weirded out.

"I think we had to learn how to get used to his sense of humour more than anything. His thing is to always keep you guessing and keep you on your toes. Whenever I thought I was playing something sloppy, he'd say, 'It doesn't get any better than that.' And then when I thought I was playing something well he'd say, 'OK, we have to do that over.' Ric liked the songs the way they were on demos, but the other guys would get into them, add parts, subtract parts, cut it up and tried a little bit of everything. There was a lot of experimentation that went on."

Though Pierre and the rest of the band finished a spin around the U.K. only a week before heading out to tour the U.S., the singer seems pretty at ease for a guy who's about to spend two more months in a bus.

"I would say that the tour's been amazing so far, considering that the tour hasn't started yet," Pierre says while parked somewhere in Grand Rapids, Michigan before the tour's first show. "If it goes anything like it has so far, this tour's gonna be a hit. Not as smooth as if you used Nair on your legs, but pretty smooth."

Aside from lobbing non-sequiturs at interviewers, Pierre's keeping himself busy with one of 32 books he's brought on tour (first on the reading list is Nick Hornby's How To Be Good).

"I go through a book about every two or three days," he explains. "It keeps me out of trouble. If I'm around people too much, I just yell and talk and lose my voice."

If Pierre runs out of reading material, however, he has two fallback strategies: rock-outs and roadkill safaris.

"There's a couple new songs with some strings, but we couldn't hire string players for the tour, so Matt, Tony and Jesse all have new keyboards to play the string parts. It's cheaper and easier that way. Plus, keyboards are fun. I say the more keyboards the better. I'm a fan of the piano.

"I'm also a fan of the armadillo, but we can't work that into our stage show, unless we let loose 150 armadillos onstage. They're so cute. In the southern states, in Texas, you see dead carcasses of armadillos, but in Minnesota you see pigeons a lot. In the mountainous areas you see elk and deer. It's fascinating, the types of dead animals you see on the streets in different parts."

Motion City Soundtrack's lone Canadian date is on Sunday at Toronto's Kool Haus. Go for the possibility of armadillo stampedes; stay for what Pierre calls "a bunch of fuckin' crazy freaks spilling out of their outfits, spilling their drinks and going nuts. Chaos erupts and carnage ensues. That's how it is. And, um, debauchery is discovered."

—Natalia Manzocco