aaamusic | On 02, Oct 2012

London – 17/09/2012

If you’re close to a computer (which, considering this is a website, is highly likely) you might want to take a quick detour to Youtube.com and type in “At The Drive-In Jools Holland” if you haven’t already seen it before. I swear this has a point, go ahead, I’ll wait. You back? It was awesome right!? A total abysmal shambles, for sure, with Jim Ward’s out of tune screaming and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s guitar sounding like it’s melting in his hands, but several hundred shades of exciting-as-fuck and a handy four minute primer on what punk rock should be all about, right? Well, yes… but put it this way, imagine paying between fifteen and twenty quid to go to your favourite band’s gig… and they play like that for an hour and a half. Only a die-hard apologist wouldn’t feel slightly short-changed. Little known fact most modern punk fans actually appreciate it when a band can play there own songs, even more so when they can play them really, really well. Motion City Soundtrack are far from the most punk rock band one can think of, sounding as they do like Weezer without the awkwardness or perverse sense of humour, but when it comes to playing sensational rock concerts that send everyone home with an enormous grin on their face there are very, very few that can do better.

Notice the emphasis on *concert* over *show*, there are plenty of bands that put on bigger and better *shows* with confetti cannons, pyrotechnics, big screens and choreographed stage moves, but in terms of the dictionary definition of a *concert*, I.E where it’s (sing it with me) “all about the music”, there’s few I’ve seen that put as much energy, passion and sheer entertainment into playing the songs with the minimum amount of flashy bullshit required. Frontman Justin Pierre is the kind of frontman you look at and assume he’ll be the shy and retiring type, all shuffled footsteps and meek “hey”’s but on stage he’s something of a force of nature, frantically gesticulating like his flyaway hair has been caused by a surprise electric shock rather than not washing it for weeks. Then there are the songs, the unabashed, big, shiny pop songs zinging off the walls of this Charing Cross nightclub that could bring a smile to the face of a depressed corpse. Her Words Destroyed My Planet, The Future Freaks Me Out and My Favourite Accident are all dispatched with enough professionalism to sound like their recorded versions, and enough vim and vigour to be worth the price of admission over staying at home with the albums.

And for some reason, this doesn’t seem to go over so well with the crowd, the venue is near capacity but only for a couple of songs do the crowd break out of a reserved appreciation for what they’re seeing. Which is a crying shame as the band are giving it everything they’ve got but it never feels like the event that their last London shows, a pair of basement shows at XOYO where they played all four of their albums in full, almost certainly were. Still, this isn’t indicative of the band as a whole and if they continue to play shows like this, then if there’s any justice in the music industry (which, truth be told, there rarely is) then they may not take over the world, but they will keep a relatively large and steaduly growing fanbase extremely happy indeed. And really, what band could ask for more?

★★★★★

Author: Will Howard