Exclusive Q and A: Motion City Soundtrack Gear Up For 'Go'

posted in: Exclusive Interviews • Pop • Rock

In the volatile modern rock scene-where you can be loved one day and hated the next- Motion City Soundtrack have managed to do the impossible. Ten years after the release of their debut album, the band continues to churn out polished and quirky pop rock records that connect directly with their maturing fanbase. Frontman Justin Pierre’s catchy and intelligent hooks paired with the band’s energetic performances have made them icons of the Warped Tour generation without pigeonholing them into any genre or passing fads.

The band has recently returned to Epitaph Records, the same label that released their first three albums. Their fifth studio album, Go, will be released on June 12th, and is sure to please fans both new and old. We caught up with guitarist Josh Cain and bassist Matt Taylor between their two sets at Bamboozle to talk about the creation of the new record, the label they created, and when you can catch the next Motion City show.

OS: How does it feel to be back at Bamboozle?

JC: It feels good!

MT: Yeah, today was really fun.

JC: There were a lot of people there.

MT: A lot of people singing along.

OS: You’re gearing up for the release of your next record on Epitaph. Why did you return to that label? Have you been happy with that choice?

JC: We’ve been very happy with the decision. It just felt like the right thing to do.

MT: We talked to a bunch of labels and everybody was awesome. It was actually tough because everybody was cool and we thought there could have been a lot of good places for the record. Brett [Gurewitz, Epitaph founder] has always been almost like our older brother. A cool older brother that supports us and puts us up in his house and he basically was just like, “You guys are always welcome here.” He told us that when we were on a different label. So, that’s amazing, and we just felt like that’s what we should do.

OS: You didn’t have a label when you were making the record, though…how did being without a label help with your creative process for Go?

JC: At that point in our lives, I think we were really happy about the idea of being kind of cut off from the world. I think up to that point, everything had just been like a big machine, running since we got signed, we put out I Am The Movie, Commit This To Memory…it’s been like, “We have to do this next and then this next,” and finally, it was like, “We have nothing to do. Let’s just go make a record. We don’t have to worry about what label it’s on, we don’t have to worry about anything. Let’s just make a record and be happy with that creative process.” It kind of brought us back to the way we made our first record, just no strings attached.

MT: We were really excited about the fact that we had no infrastructure, really, but at the same time, we were like, “let’s not stop doing what we do. Let’s continue rolling.” We didn’t tell our managers that we were writing songs. We just kind of did it.

JC: Before we signed to Epitaph [originally], we just did everything ourselves. We recorded I Am The Movie on our own, we released it, we toured on it, we kind of just pretended that nobody was going to help us. And I think we were in that mindset, we’ll just keep going, whatever happens, happens. We’ll put this out, we’ll make music. If it’s ourselves, if it’s a label…we’ll keep doing it until we don’t like it.

OS: You’ve always been known for having very clever and thoughtful lyrics. Tell us about the lyrical themes on this album?

JC: Life and death; the yin and yang of how beautiful life is, how sad death is. How important it is to spend you time doing stuff that’s important and loving the people around you. There’s some quirky love songs on there too.

MT: Yeah, there’s the occasional Justin Pierre pop culture kind of [song]. He keeps things tongue-in-cheek but I think overall, the themes are pretty heavy. Very introspective.

OS: You’ve said that this record was the hardest for you to make. Why is that?

JC: It was like a creatively taxing record to make, because we really tried to be creative in a way, like, “We don’t like what we’re doing today, so we’re going to start a new idea and see what happens.” There was a lot of songwriting in the studio and working those parts out, I think that was hard. Justin hit a roadblock writing lyrics in the middle of the record and it got tough for awhile. He was really upset about that.

MT: Usually, the problem is you can’t find creativity or the ideas stop flowing. But this time, it sounds weird, but it was like we had too many ideas. At one point we literally had to say, stop writing ideas. We need to wrangle this stuff in and pick the good stuff and work on it and get it somewhere.

OS: Yeah, and you ended up writing 30 songs for Go! How did you decide which ones would make the cut?

JC: Whatever floated to the top, whatever we liked. We only had one song where we worked on it hard and really tried to make it work and it didn’t, so we had to ditch it.

MT: We had two songs, I want to say, “Timelines” and “Son of A Gun,” that were ideas that we really, really liked, but they were different for us. They weren’t structured and we had a hard time getting them there. So we actually ended up building them in the studio. We were like, these are too good to not work on, so our producer Ed [Ackerson] dived in with us.

JC: “Son Of A Gun” was a lot like [Commit This To Memory‘s] “LGFUAD.” It was a song that Justin wrote by himself on the acoustic guitar and it sounded great like that. But whenever we tried to play with him, we just didn’t like it.

MT: We struggled for awhile, and then finally something clicked.

OS: Will you be releasing any of the others eventually?

JC: There’s only song we ditched out, we could probably revisit that sometime. It’s got to be rethought, 100%. I don’t know about that one. Everything else we finished as a B-side or not. We had about sixteen songs coming out of the studio. A lot of them are being released in different ways, like when you buy the iTunes Deluxe Edition, that comes with three of them, the Japanese version comes with another one…there’s ways to find all the songs. This day in age, you have to have a lot to give to people.

OS: In addition to retuning to Epitaph, you’ve also started your own label, The Boombox Generation. What’s coming up next for the label?

MT: We’re working with Mad Dragon Records and Drexel University; it’s a series called “Making Moves.” It’s a joint venture with us and them. For now, it’s pretty wide open. We did a split with Trampled By Turtles, as well.

JC: I think if we find a band we really like, maybe we can partner up with another label to help out that band. We might do that in the future. It’s open-ended.

OS: You guys are going out on tour soon…what are your plans for when you return from Japan?

JC: We might end up going to Indonesia and Malaysia and South Korea around that time. We’re trying to work out the details. After that, I think in the fall we’re going to do a bigger tour, if people like us. But that’s our plan!

Pre-order Go on iTunes here, and catch Motion City Soundtrack on their US tour at the dates below:

June 14th –  San Diego, CA @ Casbah

June 15th –  Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour

June 16th – San Francisco, CA @ Slims

June 18th – Salt Lake City, UT @ In the Venue

June 19th – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater

June 21st –  St. Louis, MO @ Firebird

June 22nd  – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

June 23rd – River’s Edge Festival @ Harriet Island, St. Paul, MN

June 25th – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop

June 26th – Rochester, NY @ Water Street

June 27th – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer

June 29th – To be announced

June 30th – Boston, MA @ Middle East

July 1st – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar