Full Review: Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life
Motion City Soundtrack has been trying to perfect their style of slick rock with both punk and pop influences for awhile now, but instead of advancing it, latest release finds the band stalling out more often.
It’ll probably fall to personal opinion, but the simpler, more straight forward tracks like “The Weakends”, “Skin & Bones” and “Stand Too Close” transcend the rest of the songs and end up being the most re-playable out of the bunch. The album’s closer “The Weakends” fills the spot as the album’s best with a chorus extremely slick and contrasting to the verses.
The hallmark of this band and their greatest asset, which is the lyrical cleverness, acts as a double edge sword on ‘My Dinosaur Life’. Especially with “@!#?@!”, which is about friends sticking together in the face of being bullied, but the song seems to go out of it’s way to be overly explicit just for the sake of it.
“Skin & Bones” sums up the skepticism felt in the rest of the album’s songs with the track questioning everything and asking if what we can see is all there actually is? “Delirium” echos the long time theme present in all Motion City Soundtrack releases which is the feeling of depression and use of pharmaceuticals. After 4 albums, either the topic is one that is relatable to the listener or one that has begun to wear on them.
Release Date: 1/19/10
Label: Columbia
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January 20th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Just looked up the lyrics to “@!#?@!”
I’m a quite surprised. They have used profanity before, but never to that degree. Also I don’t see where the excessive profanity added anything to the lyrics. Aside from that, Motion City Soundtrack is one of my favorite bands and I’ve heard only good things about this album.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:46 am
the edited version of the song sounds pretty funny. you can hear the clip at amazon mp3.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I agree completely with the review. Until this record, MCS, improved with every album. Not this time. They sound restrained and uninspired. Disappointing.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:40 am
While this review may be very stale and unobservant, the album itself is captivating and by far their best work. My Dinosaur Life is a gigantic leap ahead for Motion City Soundtrack and this review doesn’t do the band justice at all. This is coming from someone who disliked the group previously.