Welcome to the site of a pop-punk resurrection job for the ages.
On
the left side of a sofa in their manager’s Brooklyn office sits Justin Pierre.
Still very much rocking the freshly-electrocuted mad professor hair and
black-rimmed glasses, the Motion City Soundtrack frontman is casually quaffing
some juice. Were it not for the fact that he often charmingly puts his hand up
before speaking like a very polite student, he would look like the punk science
teacher you wish you had at school.
On
the right, sat beside him, is the man Justin describes as “the general of the
band” – Joshua Cain, lead guitarist and co-founder of MCS, and current owner of
a supremely impressive beard plucked straight from the pages of Norse
mythology.
At
different times today, the duo will wax lyrical on a host of topics, including
shout-outs to The Carpenters, Flaming Lips, saxophonist Roland Kirk (“that dude
fucking wails, three saxes at once!”) and the 2002 Nicolas Cage film
Adaptation. In the immortal words of Olaf, they are very much a pair who finish
each other’s… sandwiches – Justin always ready to chime in with a quick
addendum, or Josh to pick up a thread and run with it.
This
riveting match of word tennis is all such a far cry from the solemn moment
which broke a lot of people’s hearts – your correspondent’s too, FYI – in 2016
when Motion City Soundtrack came to their “bittersweet realisation”.
“We
have no idea what the future holds,” they said in a statement. “But for now we
are done.”
So
it was that the brakes were put on one of the greatest and most distinctive
bands of the post-millennium, one that had graced us with classics like Commit
This To Memory, Even If It Kills Me and My Dinosaur Life – records with
candour, intelligence, heartbreak and humour to burn, not to mention some of
the best pop-punk hooks ever conceived.
A
lot of factors led to them issuing that statement. A changing, streaming-led
music industry. The demands of family life. Years of touring taking a toll.
“We
realised how burned out we really were, and how much growth we needed to do on
our own,” reflects Josh today on the painful decision.
“I’m
a very slow learner – I tend to have feelings, but I don’t know what they’re
related to,” adds Justin. “I now realise, ‘Oh, I needed to slow down’ – which I
didn’t. I won’t talk for anyone else, but it’s just been a lot of therapy and a
lot of working on myself and trying to figure out how, exactly, to be human, be
a good husband, be a good dad, be a good friend. Things like that. I’m still
very far away from a lot of that, but I think I’m closer to it than I’ve ever
been. So it was very helpful to take a break.”
Not
that they were ever too far apart. The pair worked on Justin’s 2018 solo album,
In The Drink, but gradually the feeling took hold that what they had once
needed time away from was, actually, exactly where they needed to be.
“I
really kind of didn’t know who I was, and I was going through a little bit of a
crisis of, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’” remembers Josh. “I didn’t
know what I was doing that period until I came to this resolve of, like, ‘Wait,
no, I made this band and this music my life! I don’t need to run away from this
– this is what I am.’ My identity is connected to this band.”
“This
band” have dabbled here and there since that hiatus. Reunion shows started in
2019. One-off singles. But now they are back back. Behold: The Same Old
Wasted Wonderful World, the first new MCS album in 10 years which arrives on
September 19 via Epitaph.
And
a fucking fantastic new album at that. This is not by chance. It sounds exactly
like the record the band – completed by bassist Matt Taylor, keyboardist Jesse
Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton – conspired to make.
“I
said that we had to make an album that we cared a lot about,” explains Josh,
recalling the plan of attack. “It didn’t matter how well it did, but if we
wanted to continue to do what we were doing, even the ‘nostalgia’ thing, we had
to have something fuelling that fire.”
Said
fire is raging on The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, from the lead single She
Is Afraid to Justin’s wild solo that plays on title-track – one that, Josh
carefully explains, completely eclipses his own really cool passage playing at
the same time.
“I’m
sorry that I fucking bulldozed over your guitar part,” says Justin, putting a
conciliatory hand on his friend’s shoulder.
It’s
a record you could spend hours talking about. As well as being an all guns
blazing return, it features Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump, Deanna Belos of
Sincere Engineer, Mat Kerekes from Citizen and two of Justin’s favourite
authors. At the end of our conversation, K! asks if there’s anything that’s not
been covered.
“How
long do you still have?” Justin grins, though it’s unclear if he’s joking or
not.
Buckle
in, then, as Justin and Josh talk you through one of the most anticipated returns
of recent memory, taking in grief, learning how to be human, and how they now
have enough Patrick Stump a capellas stockpiled to make a whole album…