Motion City Soundtrack – “She is Afraid”

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Motion City Soundtrack have shared the new song “She is Afraid.” Pre-orders for the new album are now up.

Today, pop-punk icons Motion City Soundtrack make a triumphant return with the announcement of their new album, ‘The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World’ due for release on September 19 via Epitaph Records. For their first collection of music since 2015's ‘Panic Stations’, the band doubles down on their signature sound with renewed energy and purpose, recapturing the magic of their early days while showcasing their growth and maturity after a decade-long hiatus.

Over twenty years removed from their 2003 debut, the quintet’s signature cocktail of neurotic charm and hook-laden pop-punk is still potent on lead single “She Is Afraid”. Conceived during the making of ‘Panic Stations’, its bendy guitar licks and quirky vocal delivery sound at once familiar and newly vital.

Frontman Justin Pierre enthuses: “As soon as I heard Josh’s bonkers guitar part, I flipped out. 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 on stage 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.”

Check out the song and its accompanying Severance inspired music video below:
“She Is Afraid”
WATCH | LISTEN

“Don’t Call It a Comeback” isn’t just the name of a song off Motion City Soundtrack’s 2003 debut I Am The Movie, it’s also an apt way to summarize the band’s mission statement. During their initial run from 1997 to 2016, the Minneapolis-based group released six celebrated albums, toured the world countless times and achieved gold status for their hit single “Everything Is Alright.”
After taking a three year hiatus, the band—vocalist/guitarist Justin Pierre, guitarist Joshua Cain, bassist Matt Taylor, keyboardist Jesse Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton—started performing live again in 2019, but even the most optimistic fans didn’t necessarily expect a follow-up to 2015’s Panic Stations. “When we started conceptualizing the idea for this record, I was thinking about what we loved about doing this originally,” Cain explains. The result is The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, an album that sees the band transmuting the last decade of life experiences into the most catchy songs of their career.

To record the album, the band reunited with Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s) at the legendary Chicago studio, Electrical Audio. Featuring cameos from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (who also co-wrote the song “Particle Physics”), Citizen’s Mat Kerekes and Deanna Belos of Sincere Engineer, the album sees the band reclaiming their crown as punk rock’s most accessible—and infectious—acts. However, the most impressive aspect of The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is the fact that instead of relying solely on nostalgia, Motion City Soundtrack continue to experiment outside their comfort zone. “ It's a very interesting thing to feel like we made the most important record of our career this late in the game,” Johnson explains.

“I think that if you look at a lot of our past records, it’s about ‘What’s wrong? What am I not getting right? Why do I feel fucking crazy? Why can’t I figure this out’… and I figured it out,” Pierre admits. “It’s almost like I felt I didn’t have an identity [in the past] and now by working through the hard stuff, I know who I am.” With that sense of self-discovery mirrored by the music, when the final track fades out it may be the conclusion of the album, but in reality it’s the beginning of another chapter for Motion City Soundtrack’s collective journey.

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