Opening Up With… Motion City Soundtrack

Opening Up sees us talk to musicians about the opening track from each of their studio albums. Our next guest is Matthew Taylor, the bassist and keyboardist of Minneapolis pop-punk veterans Motion City Soundtrack.

After giving up the ghost almost a decade ago, beloved five-piece Motion City Soundtrack are back in action with their seventh studio album, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, which picks up exactly where they left off and features collaborations with members of Fall Out Boy, Citizen and Sincere Engineer to boot.

“The opening track gets overlooked a lot, I feel.” As Taylor prepares to “open up” with Blunt, so to speak, he’s reflecting on what he looks for in an opening track – not just as a musician, but as a listener.

“To me, opening songs on albums always take me back to these pinnacle moments of being a fan. I can remember being in a record store, and they had an advanced copy of Clarity by Jimmy Eat World so they played it for us in the shop. When ‘Table for Glasses’ came on, I couldn’t believe it – I’d never heard anything so epic and so beautiful.” The bassist appreciates the various ways that artists can approach their track-ones, noting that all have their upsides.

“You can really build something off what you do on that first thing you hear,” he says. “It could be some gorgeous, quiet moment; it could be something that just comes at you straight from the downbeat. I guess the latter has really been Motion City’s thing since we started making records. It’s like we’re driving the car straight past you – ‘We’re going! Are you coming?’” With that, let’s hop in to Motion City’s opening moments.

‘Cambridge’ – I Am the Movie (2003)

A quick Motion City Soundtrack history lesson: Taylor was actually the band’s fourth bass player. In its initial formation circa 1997, lead guitarist Joshua Cain was the band’s bassist before he moved over to the instrument he’d play in Motion City Soundtrack to this day.

Austin Lindstrom took the reins from Cain in 1998 as they expanded to two guitars, sticking around for two years before he was replaced by Matt Potocnik – who himself lasted less than a year. Lindstrom returned for a spell, but he was out of the picture by early 2002. The band continued briefly as a four-piece, with Cain back on bass, until our hero stepped into the role just as the band were finishing work on I Am the Movie, their all-important debut.

“They’d written the record already,” recalls Taylor, “so I was kind of the last piece of the puzzle. A lot of what you hear on the record was done about six months before I joined. When I heard ‘Cambridge’, I knew I had my work cut out for me in this band. It was like, ‘oh shit – I gotta play fast‘! I was so excited by that song. Jesse [Johnson, keyboardist] kicks that song off with this crazy synthesizer sound – you don’t really have any idea of what’s coming next until Tony [Thaxton] rolls in with the drums. Keeping up with the band was like driving next to a freight train. I was the new guy, and I wanted to impress people. Clearly, it worked.”

‘Attractive Today’ – Commit This to Memory (2005)

At 103 seconds, ‘Attractive Today’ is the shortest Motion City Soundtrack opener. It might even be their shortest song period. What it also is, however, is one of their best – a burst of nervous energy and skittish pop-punk precision. “We knew straight away that was going to start the record,” says Taylor – who was far more involved in the songwriting now the band’s line-up had been solid for a few years.

“The whole thing kind of came out in a blur. I don’t remember too much from when we were making it, but when Justin [Pierre, vocalist/guitarist] was playing it by himself I think it was pretty clear what we needed to do. We hammered it out really quickly. I think it all came together on the same day as ‘Everything is Alright’, which is crazy.”

‘Attractive Today’ came together so quickly, the band didn’t initially realise just how short it was. When finishing touches were being made to Commit This to Memory, they considered retooling the song – perhaps a solo from Cain, or a bridge from Pierre. It never felt right: “We knew it was done,” says Taylor. “We love a short and sweet opener, especially if it’s fast. We felt no need to drag it out any further. We were good!”

‘Fell In Love Without You’ – Even If It Kills Me (2007)

The first thing you hear on Motion City Soundtrack’s third studio album is not the band itself. Instead, it’s an orchestra tuning up – which stemmed out an idea that Taylor, grinning and shaking his head, describes as “utterly silly”. “We’re a pop-punk band!” he laughs. “We had no business having an orchestra up front on our record, but it was so stupid we kind of knew that we had to do it.” They hit a stumbling block when they realised that due to being in half-step-down tuning, the orchestra sample didn’t fit the song’s home key.

No to worry: “We’re there, in the studio, pitching down an orchestra digitally until it matches the tune of the song. We think we’re the biggest geniuses on planet Earth with that one! That was a fun one to make with Adam – he really dug his hands in on that one.”

Taylor is referring to the late Adam Schlesinger, the bassist of Fountains of Wayne and a producer for everyone from The Monkees to They Might Be Giants. He served as a co-producer on Even If It Kills Me, which marked the only time they worked together before his untimely passing in April of 2020. Taylor’s face falls when remembering Schlesinger, who was only 52 when he died.

“He was one of those guys that was absorbing everything, even when you thought he wasn’t paying attention,” he says. “Half the time, you’d look over and he’d be typing away on his laptop. Without even looking up, he’d suggest the most intricate and crazy idea for the song. He’d get up, go to the piano, and come up with the most unbelievable thing you’ve heard in your life – and then go right back to the laptop. He was a complete virtuoso. His energy was crazy – you could tell he lived and breathed music.”

‘Worker Bee’ – My Dinosaur Life (2010)

Justin Pierre is presented on his lonesome for the first half of ‘Worker Bee’, lulling listeners into a false sense of security with his clean, ringing guitar and gentle vocal delivery. When his bandmates enter the fray and promptly bowl him over, you realise the ambush that has taken place – and you’re all the more grateful for it.

Taylor admits to not remembering all that much from this period of the band, but does offer this: “Justin was originally doing that one all by himself, but when he came to us with it I think we all knew we could really rock it. It was all pretty straightforward from there. It all just kind of fell into place. I wish I could remember more!”

‘Circuits and Wires’ – Go (2012)

Tony Thaxton is the secret weapon of Motion City Soundtrack. The drummer – who joined a matter of months before Taylor – is responsible for some of the most memorable intros to the band’s best songs, including ‘My Favourite Accident’ and their signature song ‘Everything is Alright’. When it came to kicking off album number five, he’s once again in fine form as he races across Johnson’s buzzing synthesizer to really make Go… well, go. “We always encouraged him,” says Taylor. “Like, ‘dude, you gotta do something crazy!’

“That drum fill he plays when we all properly kick in, I think, is one of the wildest things he’s ever done. Tony’s always had that let’s-go attitude about him, and this really feels like his song.” When it comes to Go as a whole, Taylor admits that the wear and tear of a non-stop decade, not to mention being dropped from their record label in Columbia, is starting to catch up with them. He describes the creation of the album as “a weird time” in Motion City Soundtrack world, as well as a product of its environment. “It was winter in Minneapolis; two feet of snow, walking around in zero-degree weather while it’s cloudy and grey every day,” he recalls.

“It was still a fun record to make, don’t get me wrong, but it definitely sounds like the environment it was made in. One good thing that came out of it was having the entire studio to ourselves, as we’d booked it for weeks. We’d all hang out and huddle together in the living room, playing music together – and a lot of the best stuff on the album came from moments like that. I would love to do something like that again now we’re back together.”

‘Anything At All’ – Panic Stations (2015)

Despite singing so on stage every single night, everything was not alright by the time Motion City Soundtrack got to album number six. The classic line-up had fractured, with Thaxton exiting the fold a year after Go – and although the band soldiered on with the excellent Claudio Rivera (ex-Saves the Day) assuming the drum throne, their perseverance could only get them so far. “The excitement wasn’t what it used to be,” says Taylor about the creation of what would prove to be the band’s final album before their 2016 split.

“It was less ‘let’s get in there and do it’, and more ‘let’s just get this done’. I hate to say that for Claudio, because he’s a wonderful drummer and was a breath of fresh air at a time when we needed it. Did we know it was going to be the last album? I don’t know. I don’t think we really knew anything at that point. We were just showing up like it was our nine-to-five.” You could easily interpret Pierre’s opening action-hero style recital of the phrase “let’s do this” as heavy sarcasm on ‘Anything At All’, but you could also see it as giving in – what the hell, we’re already here, let’s do this.

For Panic Stations, Motion City found themselves recording everything live in the studio for the first (and, to date, only) time. “We’d never done anything like that before, but it was at the insistence of our producer John Agnello. We thought it sounded great, but we had no idea what we were going to do when he pressed record. We eased up a bit when we realised that if one of us blew it, we could come back and fix it so long as the drum take was good. Regardless, it was a new experience for all of us.” Though his memory isn’t the best – as he keeps reminding Blunt – Taylor seems to recall ‘Anything’ being a one-take wonder. “If it wasn’t, we can say it was – it’s a better story,” he laughs.

‘Some Wear a Dark Heart’ – The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World (2025)

Following a farewell tour, with Thaxton back on board, Motion City Soundtrack called it a day in 2016. That, so we thought, was all she wrote. All five members moved to different parts of the US, playing in different projects or even opting out of music entirely. In 2019, however, the stars aligned to bring the band back together once again. Of course, if you know your recent history, you’ll know that the comeback was short-lived: The band did indeed tour in January of 2020, but two months later touring was off the cards entirely.

Stuck at home, Pierre began sending demos of new songs to other band members. One of these was ‘Some Wear a Dark Heart’, which would go on to be the opening number on Motion City’s new album – although, as Taylor recalls, he almost accidentally derailed the song entirely. “Justin sent me this song, which was just him on guitar,” he says. “I needed something to play along to, so I added some fake-ass MIDI drums and sent it back. Justin hated it! I didn’t think it was that bad! In any case, it went on the back-burner until a few years ago.”

After resuming touring around 2022, it was Cain that put it to the band that they should start looking at the next stage of their reunion and working on a new studio album. As material began to gather, ‘Dark Heart’ was rediscovered in an old folder. “Justin still wasn’t sure about it, but I knew the bones of what he had in that demo were really good,” says Taylor. “We ended up taking the song in a different direction – as you’ll hear, it’s a bit of a departure from the super fast stuff that normally opens our records – but Justin ended up loving it. He had his heart dead set on this opening the album, and we were all totally behind him on that one.”

Taylor, smiling, is clearly overjoyed to be speaking about Motion City Soundtrack in the present tense again. Having been burnt by reunion records as a fan in the past, he knows all too well about the stigma surrounding them. “Bands get older, and you’re scared to hear anything new,” he says. “In my humble opinion, this is the best record we’ve made – if not ever, at least in a very long time. We worked really hard on the songs, and we got them to a place that felt really good to all of us. I’m excited, man. I haven’t felt like this in forever. Everything feels different this time around.”

The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is out now via Epitaph Records. Stream and purchase it here.