I feel that I should begin by admit­ting that I got the wrong end of the stick with this album. It has in fact been around for sev­eral months now but in spite of being a bit of a fan, I had put off listen­ing to it, for reas­ons I shall explain.

I have never been one to accuse musi­cians of “selling out” but I believe that when cer­tain bands develop a level of pop­ular­ity, the qual­ity of their music becomes a little sloppy. One has to only look at the age­ing New Found Glory or Greenday and their increas­ingly feeble attempts to keep the cash rolling in to see what I mean. (“The saints are com­ing” brought me out in a rash)

Okay, let’s be hon­est. Motion City Soundtrack aren’t quite so main­stream, but it’s undeni­able that they have a pretty solid fol­low­ing so, dread­ing some piss-poor pop cov­ers, or a self-satisfied rant about the state of our planet, I left it alone.

When I did even­tu­ally pick it up how­ever, I was pleas­antly sur­prised. On first impres­sion, MCS have used pretty much the same for­mula employed in their pre­vi­ous albums, “I Am The Movie” and “Com­mit This To Memory”; a good bal­ance of catchy pop-punk gui­tars and syn­thes­isers. The new album isn’t par­tic­u­larly revolu­tion­ary but then again, if it ain’t broke!

Justin Pierre’s vocals are still light and cheery, and the songs just have an “easy to listen to” sort of feel to them, plus the video to “Broken Heart” really shows that they’ve still got a sense of humour. As far as heart­break, awk­ward social grace and end­less skate­board­ing go, it’s busi­ness as usual; again not really break­ing any new ground, but here I’ve been reminded that MCS can be genu­inely uplift­ing and enter­tain­ing, without try­ing to shove any­thing down your throat.

For me, “Broken Heart”, “Ant­o­nia” and “Last Night” are the high­lights of this album, with poppy vocal and key­board hooks that never seem to get tired. If you’re a fan exclus­ively of heavy gui­tars and loud vocals, this album isn’t really for you, but exist­ing fans def­in­itely won’t be disappointed

More of the same please, lads.