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Motion City Soundtrack - Go

Life is complex but we've got plenty of tries to get it right–which is why when Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Pierre sings, "All the destruction will one day end and you'll finally know exactly who you are"-it's a sentiment of self-discovery filled with optimism instead of regret.

Correspondingly after putting out one album on Columbia, Motion City Soundtrack are in the midst of a career renaissance as they return to their longtime label Epitaph to release 'Go', the most mature and developed album of their fourteen-year career.

Having previously worked with Ric Ocasek, Adam Schlesinger and Eli Janney, as well as Mark Hoppus, 'Go' saw the band, which is also composed of guitarist Josh Cain, bassist Matt Taylor, drummer Tony Thaxton and keyboardist Jesse Johnson, reconvening in their hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, to spend an extended stretch of time with producer Ed Ackerson (who the band worked with on their acoustic singles collection). The result is a cerebral collection of sounds that confronts big questions without sacrificing any of the energy or raw emotion that has endeared Motion City Soundtrack to fans worldwide.

"I think honestly I was really obsessed with death," Pierre explains when asked about his mental space during the writing of 'Go'. In addition to entering his mid-30s his obsession with mortality was also provoked by the passing of his grandmother who he spontaneously visited the night before she passed away. "That's where it started and I don't necessarily think of it in terms of life or death but more as love and death as two sides of the same coin," he explains. "There are choices you can make as far as holding back or embracing your existence and choosing life and that ties into the album title for me."

While this might seem like heady subject matter for a band who burst on the scene more than a decade ago with their pop-culture-heavy single 'The Future Freaks Me Out', in reality Motion City Soundtrack have always maintained a striking dichotomy between upbeat music and darker lyricism-and 'Go' sees the band entering the next stage of their career in a flash of brilliance. "I feel like this album is a choose your own adventure book in the sense that you can look at these songs from different angles depending on your mental state," Pierre explains, "my hope is that they will make sense to you no matter where you're at."

From the expansive-sounding, intricately arranged ballad 'Everyone Will Die' to the sweetly syncopated, falsetto-fueled rager 'Boxelder', 'Go' sees Motion City Soundtrack stretching out sonically to push the limits of their sound without altering the solidly constructed foundation that it's built upon. "We're not trying to be anything, we just write songs and the best ones float to the top and this time around it was clear which songs made the cut," Cain explains. "I think this was one of the hardest records we ever made because it was so emotionally draining and we recorded it in the middle of winter but in the end I think that frustration helped us make a better record."

Like all classic albums 'Go' is teeming with happy accidents such as the guitar solo on 'Son Of A Gun', which Cain originally played as a joke that the band fell in love with. "We did a lot of stuff like that," he explains, "when we had a unique moment happen we kept it and that's really what I love about this album." Ackerson also had a huge influence on the final product, which features many firsts for Motion City Soundtrack including a string quartet on 'Everyone Will Die'. "We probably wrote 30 songs for this album but nothing was written in stone and we really had the freedom to make up some of the moments as we went along, which we had never done before and was a really exciting experience for us," Pierre adds.