Last year, Motion City Soundtrack released “Stop Talking,” their first new song in a decade, for the 2008-set coming-of-age film Dìdi. That track doesn’t appear on their forthcoming album, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World (out Sept. 19 via Epitaph Records), but it did embolden the band to return to the studio.
Recorded at Electrical Audio in Chicago, the LP was produced by Sean O’Keefe, who worked on some of their early split seven-inches. It also features collaborations with Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (who co-wrote “Particle Physics”), Citizen’s Mat Kerekes, and Sincere Engineer. Some of the songs trace back to the sessions for 2015’s Panic Stations, including lead single “She Is Afraid.”
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“As soon as I heard Josh’s bonkers guitar part, I flipped out,” frontman Justin Pierre recalls. “I don’t know how he does it. I’d been listening to a lot of Del the Funky Homosapien around the time of writing the lyrics, and I think his influence comes out a bit in the verses — but hopefully in a way that doesn’t sound totally derivative. I think the rest of the tune owes a debt of gratitude to That Dog, for sure. Matt mentioned he hears some Faith No More in the tune, which is always a good sign, and now I hear it, too. Hell, I learned how to be weird onstage watching Mike Patton on the You Fat Bastards (Live At The Britton Academy London) videocassette as a teenager in ’90/’91. I wore that shit out.”
While “She Is Afraid” takes influence from those ’90s groups, its video pays respect to the modern Apple TV thriller Severance, where select employees have their memories split to create boundaries between work and home. There’s no “Defiant Jazz,” but the band do rip it up in one of the empty rooms on the Severed floor. See for yourself below.
Motion City Soundtrack – The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World tracklist
- “Some Wear a Dark Heart”
- “She Is Afraid”
- “Particle Physics” (feat. Patrick Stump)
- “You Know Who the Fuck We Are”
- “Melancholia”
- “Your Days Are Numbered” (feat. Mat Kerekes)
- “Downer”
- “Mi Corazón”
- “Bloodline”
- “Things Like This” (feat. Sincere Engineer)
- “The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World”