A pioneering force within punk-pop, Motion City Soundtrack comprises Joshua Cain on guitar, Tony Thaxton on drums, Justin Pierre handling vocals and guitar, Jesse Johnson on Moog, and Matthew Taylor on bass. After finishing high school, Minneapolis natives Pierre and Cain—who drew influence from Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, the Flaming Lips, and Superchunk—launched the group in 1997. They quickly assembled a provisional lineup and put out a self-released 7" that year. While supporting the record on a tour through Pennsylvania, the band encountered Thaxton and Taylor from Richmond, Virginia’s Submerge; the two players soon relocated from their hometown to join Motion City Soundtrack permanently. The expanded lineup headed into the studio with producer and engineer Ed Rose, whose credits include the Get Up Kids and Ultimate Fakebook. Three weeks before sessions began, keyboardist Jesse Johnson—whose Ordinary Records had released some of Jimmy Eat World’s earliest material in 1995—came aboard to free Pierre from synthesizer duties.
With the roster now settled, the band issued its punk-infused debut, I Am the Movie, in summer 2003. During subsequent club and basement shows, Epitaph Records signed them; shortly afterward they supported blink-182 across Europe and Japan. Blink’s bassist Mark Hoppus grew fond of the group and offered to produce the follow-up, Commit This to Memory, which arrived two years later and leaned further into pop. A deluxe edition with bonus DVD surfaced in 2006, after which the band spent summer on the Warped Tour and headed to Europe with OK Go that autumn. For their third album they teamed with producers Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys, and Ric Ocasek of the Cars; Even If It Kills Me appeared in September 2007.
The record entered the Top 20 in its opening week, marking the band’s strongest chart debut at that point. Major labels took interest, and by the next summer Motion City Soundtrack had inked a deal with Columbia Records. To build on the momentum they finished their Warped Tour commitments, spent the second half of 2008 writing new songs, and reunited with Mark Hoppus in the studio. My Dinosaur Life was finished by June 2009 and came out early the following year, led by the single “Disappear.” Following two years of touring that included dates across the United States, the U.K., and Brazil, the band returned to the studio in 2011. Their fifth album, Go, surfaced on Epitaph in 2012.
While on the Warped Tour the members composed material for the next record and enlisted John Agnello, known for work with Sonic Youth and Kurt Vile, aiming to capture their live intensity. They opted to track the songs live for the first time, choosing Underbelly North—formerly Pachyderm Studio, site of Nirvana’s In Utero. After rehearsals, Panic Stations was captured in fourteen days during June 2014 and released in September 2015.
