Motion City Soundtrack Release ‘The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World’ Their First Album In Ten Years
Today, Midwest pop-punk veterans Motion City Soundtrack make a triumphant return with the release of their new album, ‘The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World’ out now via Epitaph Records. Their first full-length since 2015’s Panic Stations, the record is a document of the last ten years that shows the band growing as people alongside their music. Listen to the album in full HERE.
MCS have also teamed up with Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump for a partially animated music video for “Particle Physics” directed by David Prindle and shot by Jesse Cain. The upbeat romp launches with a zippy synthesizer intro and witty, pop culture-infused quips that reference everything from the indie band That Dog to celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks. Check out the video featuring the band and Patrick Stump HERE.
MCS guitarist Joshua Cain explains how the song and collab came to be: “We met Patrick in the early days of Fall Out Boy and had more recently talked about having him contribute to this album. He told us he had an idea running through his head about a song Motion City Soundtrack would have written but haven’t written yet. It was this little riff and chorus to ‘Particle Physics’ and even though it was just part of the song, the vibe was completely there.”
“Don’t Call It a Comeback” isn’t just the name of a song off Motion City Soundtrack’s 2003 debut I Am The Movie, it’s also an apt way to summarize the band’s mission statement. During their initial run from 1997 to 2016, the Minneapolis-based group released six celebrated albums, toured the world countless times and achieved gold status for their hit single “Everything Is Alright.”
After taking a three-year hiatus, the band—vocalist/guitarist Justin Pierre, guitarist Joshua Cain, bassist Matt Taylor, keyboardist Jesse Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton—started performing live again in 2019, but even the most optimistic fans didn’t necessarily expect a follow-up to 2015’s Panic Stations. “When we started conceptualizing the idea for this record, I was thinking about what we loved about doing this originally,” Cain explains. The result is The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, an album that sees the band transmuting the last decade of life experiences into the catchiest songs of their career.
To record the album, the band reunited with Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s) at the legendary Chicago studio, Electrical Audio. Alongside cameos from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (who also co-wrote “Particle Physics”), Citizen’s Mat Kerekes for rock ballad “Your Days Are Numbered”, and Deanna Belos of Sincere Engineer, the album sees the band reclaiming their crown as punk rock’s most accessible—and infectious—acts. However, the most impressive aspect of The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is the fact that instead of relying solely on nostalgia, Motion City Soundtrack continue to experiment outside their comfort zone. “ It's a very interesting thing to feel like we made the most important record of our career this late in the game,” Johnson explains.
“I think that if you look at a lot of our past records, it’s about ‘What’s wrong? What am I not getting right? Why do I feel fucking crazy? Why can’t I figure this out’… and I figured it out,” Pierre admits. “It’s almost like I felt I didn’t have an identity [in the past] and now by working through the hard stuff, I know who I am.” With that sense of self-discovery mirrored by the music, when the final track fades out it may be the conclusion of the album, but in reality it’s the beginning of another chapter for Motion City Soundtrack’s collective journey.