Motion City Soundtrack由Joshua Cain (guitar)， Tony Thaxton (drums)， Justin Pierre (vocals/guitar), Jesse Johnson (moog) 和Matthew Taylor (bass)五个小伙子组成。乐队灵魂Cain和Pierre是高中同学，很小就受Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, the Flaming Lips的影响，99年两人成立了Motion City Soundtrack，并发了个小样“7”，那时Taylor, Thaxton, 和Johnson还未加入。随后，随着成员们的陆续加入，2003年在制作人Ed Rose的帮助下，他们发行了PUNK处女碟《I Am the Movie》，专辑毫无矫情，受到乐评及歌迷的好评，被人称作glazed-punk(光滑punk？)。2005年他们发行了第二张专辑《Commit This to Memory》，而《Commit This to Memory Deluxe Edition》则是加入了bonus DVD和一首未发行的单曲Invisible Monsters在内，并重新在2006年发行。
 
总体来说，这支乐队风格清新，同众多主流POP-punk差不多，旋律编曲方面比较重视，主唱Justin Pierre嗓音不错，打入个排行榜没有什么问题，关键是大家怎么看他们了。
 
Motion City Soundtrack is an American rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, formed in 1997. The band consists of founding members Justin Pierre (lead vocals and guitar) and Joshua Cain (lead guitar and backing vocals), along with keyboardist and moog synthesist Jesse Johnson, bassist and backing vocalist Matthew Taylor, and drummer, percussionist and backing vocalist Claudio Rivera. Motion City Soundtrack has released five studio albums and sold almost 600,000 records throughout their career, including over half a million in the United States alone.
 
Motion City Soundtrack's first release was a 7& single, &Promenade/Carolina&, in 1999. The following year they released their debut EP, Kids for America, and then a second, Back to the Beat. They released their debut album I Am the Movie twice, in 2002. Their first five releases were all self-released with the aid of a small record label. Backed up by their constant touring it fashioned them a fast growing fan base, and a signing with Epitaph Records. After spending their first five years finding the right lineup, the Epitaph re-issue of I Am the Movie in 2003 was the band's big break. First major single &The Future Freaks Me Out& arrived with live and television success, but failed in radio airplay and the charts. 2003 and 2004 brought three Split EPs alongside Schatzi, Limbeck and Matchbook Romance. The second album, Commit This to Memory, has been their most successful album to date, selling 285,000+ records and peaking at number two on the Independent Albums chart. It featured the single, &Everything Is Alright&, which also found success on the likes of MTV, but also fell short in radio airplay and the charts.
 
The band released their third full-length album Even if It Kills Me in 2007. The album debuted at number 16 on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Independent Albums chart. It produced singles &Broken Heart&, &This Is for Real& and &It Had to Be You&, which all received television airplay. Motion City Soundtrack released a fourth album entitled My Dinosaur Life in January 2010, which debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200. It is their first album released on Columbia, a major record label. Motion City Soundtrack's fifth studio album, Go, was released June 12, 2012 in a joint effort between Epitaph records and the band's own label, The Boombox Generation.
 
(wiki)
 
by MacKenzie Wilson
 
A leading light in the punk-pop genre, Motion City Soundtrack includes members Joshua Cain (guitar), Tony Thaxton (drums), Justin Pierre (vocals/guitar), Jesse Johnson (Moog), and Matthew Taylor (bass). Following their high-school graduation, Minneapolis natives Pierre and Cain -- both of whom were inspired by Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, the Flaming Lips, and Superchunk -- formed the band in 1999. The pair assembled a temporary lineup and issued a self-released 7& that same year. Later, while touring through Pennsylvania in support of their release, Motion City Soundtrack met Thaxton and Taylor of the Virginia-based band Submerge. The two musicians decided to leave their hometown of Richmond, VA, to join Motion City Soundtrack full-time, and the expanded band soon entered the studio with producer/engineer Ed Rose (the Get Up Kids, Ultimate Facebook). Three weeks before recording commenced, they were also joined by keyboardist Jesse Johnson (whose personal record label, Ordinary Records, had issued some of Jimmy Eat World's earliest material in 1995) to relieve singer/guitarist Pierre of his synthesizer duties.
 
I Am the Movie With a new lineup firmly in place, the band's punk-glazed debut, I Am the Movie, was released in the summer of 2003. While playing venues and basements in support of the album, Motion City Soundtrack was picked up by Epitaph Records; later, they joined blink-182 on a tour through Europe and Japan. Blink's bassist, Mark Hoppus, took a liking to the band and agreed to produce their next album; the resulting Commit This to Memory was released two years later and featured an increasingly pop-heavy sound. A deluxe version of the album (complete with bonus DVD) appeared in 2006, and the band spent the summer on Warped Tour before heading to Europe with OK Go that fall. Entering the studio for the third time, Motion City Soundtrack began to work with producers Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne), Eli Janney (of Girls Against Boys), and Ric Ocasek (of the Cars). The completed product, Even If It Kills Me, was released in September 2007.
 
My Dinosaur LifeEven If It Kills Me cracked the Top 20 during its first week, becoming the band's highest-charting album to date. Major labels took notice, and by the following summer, Motion City Soundtrack had signed a new contract with Columbia Records. Eager to capitalize on such momentum, the group quickly wrapped up their Warped Tour obligations, wrote new material during the latter half of 2008, and returned to the recording studio with Mark Hoppus. My Dinosaur Life was completed by June 2009 and released early the following year, with &Disappear& serving as the lead single. After a couple years of touring, which found the band making stops all over the United States as well the U.K. and Brazil, Motion City Soundtrack went back into the studio in 2011 to work on new material. Their fifth album, Go, arrived in 2012 on Epitaph.