Motion City Soundtrack’s Midwest Love Affair

Every Sunday, milk crate revisits an iconic piece of music history—artist, album, or otherwise—as a part of our weekly crate digging series.

Design by Francis Mertes

By Mario Sierra-Roca

Easily their most popular release, Motion City Soundtrack’s emo pop delight Commit This To Memory, is their most fleshed out in more ways than one, being the first album where each member of the band wrote their own material along with being frontman Justin Pierre’s (vocals, guitar) most lyrically vulnerable. MCS began in 1997 in Minneapolis after Pierre and Joshua Cain (guitar) decided that they too could make synth-heavy alt rock just like The Rentals, early Weezer, and Superchunk. With many line up changes around their earlier years, they found permanent members in Tony Thaxton (drums), Jesse Johnson (keys), and Matthew Taylor (bass) in 2001, later recording their debut album I Am the Movie a year later and releasing in 2003. MCS began their writing sessions for Commit This to Memory in “the Dungeon,” a rehearsal space in Minneapolis that used to drain the energy out of band members, most of them quoting they hated it for its gloomy and moody atmosphere. As the rest of the band kept writing in “the Dungeon,” Pierre found himself in a transitional period where he quit the band, took a break from writing and moved to Los Angeles, moving in with founder of Epitaph Records Brett Gurewitz to attend Alcoholics Anonymous far from home.

After a couple months had passed Cain, Thaxton, Johnson and Taylor reunited with Pierre in L.A. to begin recording demos. This was the band’s first time recording an album in a more professional setting. This time they had more money than before and carried themselves with a more uplifting energy as they moved into sunny Los Angeles. 

Commit This to Memory’s charm comes from the idealistic nature of bands trying to sound like their influences but being referred to as something completely different. Different members expressed wanting to sound like the Pixies, Braid, or Jawbox but instead being grouped in with the likes of Fall Out Boy, The Starting Line, and Panic! At the Disco. Unlike the themes of girls, highschool and going to local shows that aforementioned bands talk about, Pierre’s writing is much more vulnerable, giving himself the title of “drug addict, drunk, and fuck up,” recalling the times that his friends would tell him stories that he couldn’t remember from prior nights, yet still living, breathing, and being in a successful rock band. 

While Angelo Spagnolo writes that Commit This To Memory is a type of record your ex leaves in your car and you find a year later as memories of being together flood and punch you in the lungs, I say they punch you in the face. HARD. As those index and middle finger knuckles reach your cheek there’s a rush that only these 12 songs provide. 

There is something so infinitely personal about Commit This to Memory and Justin Pierre’s writing is so powerful that it still makes it relatable. It’s much more than just a record, also a change of pace for Pierre as a man and Motion City Soundtrack as a band with every member taking care of their own parts, the band sounds much more full from the very first note they all play together.

Starting off with double header “Attractive Today” into “Everything is Alright,” we get a much more polished sound compared to their debut album, along with one that is much more consistent sonically. These two songs bring us straight into MCS’s world of hooks; with no instrument overshadowing the other, the band plays off of each other ridiculously well. As Pierre pours his heart out about his drinking habits, anxiety, and OCD he does so with catchy, overstating lyrics that make themselves out as conversations that we shouldn’t eavesdrop on. The band’s momentum doesn’t stop throughout almost the entire album, centering around Pierre’s writing from the third track onward. “When You’re Around” and “Resolution” both revolve about Pierre’s drug usage and how it affects himself and the relationships he holds with others. In “When You’re Around,” he talks to us about how he hates himself when he’s drunk as if he is talking about another person. He states “The least you could do is take it back / All the vicious remarks and verbal attacks / ‘Cause I can’t fucking stand it / When you’re around.” “Resolution” covers how the drinking has affected others, most importantly those who love and care for him, “She put up with so much of my madness and my self-abuse / She would tend to my wounds and fill me with food when I’d stumble in drunk for breakfast / She was right to take off before she was consumed.” With writing so in your face it speaks so easily for itself. 

“Make Out Kids” is the album’s most “emo-pop punk,” tinged song being strictly about high school friendships-with-benefits and the romantic consequences those relationships can result in. Each verse serves as a step taken from friends-with-benefits to lovers to falling out, peaking with a snowed-in winter break filled with “Cocktails and miniature mistakes / Lights out, we’re covered in each others’ warm embrace.” A song like “Time Turned Fragile” serves as the perfect center piece to an album like this. Made up of two separate songs (along with building off of the ending of “Make Out Kids”), “Time Turned Fragile” is sung through the perspective of Justin’s dad, each verse a memory they shared together, each chorus reminiscing about his son. The song ends with atmospheric synth pads drowning out as the first half of the album concludes.  

This second half begins with “L.G. FUAD (Let’s Get Fucked Up and Die)” , a song that tackles the nature of drinking heavily and doing absolutely nothing, being unhappy but ultimately almost not caring enough to truly change. He overexaggerates the usage of getting “fucked up” and “dying,” as detailed by the first line as death serves more as being completely and utterly alone with no one to care for you, not even yourself. Still, we see he has hope and writes “I believe that I can / Overcome this and beat everything in the end,” while ultimately failing by choosing “…to abuse for the time being / Maybe I’ll win, but for now I’ve decided to die.” “Together We’ll Ring in the New Year” centers completely around his social anxiety, depicting himself at a new years party. He talks about the worst you could ever feel at a party, smiling without sincerity, bored, wondering why you even came and wanting to be at home. There’s a certain sassiness to Pierre’s vocal delivery specifically on this song that makes every line just slightly humorous and cut a bit deeper. “Together We’ll Ring in the New Year” is the only song on Commit This to Memory with the sole instruments being clean guitars and as it ends it begins to feedback into “Hangman,” the obligatory “album name in the chorus” banger. It also happens to feature album producer and Blink-182 guitarist and vocalist Mark Hoppus during the bridge. 

The album ends with “Hold Me Down,” the band’s longest. It serves one purpose to conclude Commit This to Memory and it does so in a song about receiving a break up letter. It builds up detailing the events of the aftermath of the break up, cancelling double dates, handling sobriety and rethinking over and over again about how much you truly loved this person. It ends with Pierre trailing off singing “how will I break the news to you?” as ambient synths linger in the background and fade out minutes after, concluding the album. 

Commit This to Memory came out 21 years ago and is still as catchy as ever. With overdriven guitars interwoven with punchy synth leads inspired by the synth rock rave in the ‘90s alternative scene, Motion City Soundtrack take us through a personal, vulnerable look into how Justin Pierre deals with in his day to day life amassed with anxiety, OCD, old drug habits, sobriety and romance. While the short list of themes on this album stays pretty straight forward, Pierre creates tiny different worlds in each song that each separate one serves a valid purpose. At the end of this album you’re left much more open and most importantly hopeful. With every self-loathing attribute that Justin Pierre gives to himself there is another line from him that gives you twice as much hope that everything is alright.