Motion City Soundtrack’s new­est offer­ing ‘My Dino­saur Life’ is an album I want to be derog­at­ory about. I want to say that it is just a rehash of albums past, the same tired old offer­ing etc., etc. I want to say all of these things but I just can’t. Like every Motion City album since ‘I Am The Movie’, the first listen doesn’t wow you, but gradu­ally those twelve songs worm their way into your sub-conscious and you find your­self hum­ming them in the car/bath/toilet.

This is another fine offer­ing from the quin­tet, full of songs of insec­ur­ity, pess­im­ism and slasher films. Pop-culture ref­er­ences are rife and the hooks are as catchy as ever, but there is some­thing miss­ing. Long time fans will by now have come to expect the haunt­ing acous­tic track that adorns every album since ‘I Am The Movie’. ‘Stand Too Close’ is ‘Dinosaur’s’ offer­ing and it’s fine. It’s just no ‘The Con­ver­sa­tion’ or ‘Hold Me Down’. That theme is recur­rent through­out the album; the songs are good and catchy but there’s no ‘Cap­ital H’, ‘The Future Freaks Me Out’ or ‘LGFAUD’. The stand-out songs are very good ‘Worker Bee’, ‘A Life­less Ordin­ary’ and ‘Pulp Fic­tion’ but I doubt you would put any of the oth­ers on your MP3 player.

With Mark Hop­pus back on pro­duc­tion à la ‘I Am The Movie’, I expec­ted so much more than an album that is fine for back­ground music and not much else. Although in say­ing that, I am hum­ming ‘A Life­less Ordin­ary’ as I work so maybe it’s not all bad.