page_title: Motion City Soundtrack
section_title: Music
hierarchical_section_title: Motion City Soundtrack / Musical style and influences / Music
caption_attribution_description: Jesse Johnson, keyboardist for rock group Motion City Soundtrack, performs a "Moogstand" -- a handstand on his Moog synthesizer -- on August 14, 2008.
context_page_description: Motion City Soundtrack is an American rock band that formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1997. The band's line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Justin Pierre, lead guitarist Joshua Cain, keyboardist Jesse Johnson, bassist Matthew Taylor, and drummer Tony Thaxton. Over the course of their career, the group has toured heavily and released six studio albums, the majority on independent label Epitaph Records. The band's sound, at times described as pop punk or emo, makes notable use of the Moog synthesizer. Pierre mainly handles the band's lyrics, which often touch on themes of anxiety, alienation, and relationships.
  The band was founded by Cain and Pierre, and it took several years to form a stable lineup. I Am the Movie, the group's debut album, was released in 2003. Their commercial breakthrough, Commit This to Memory, arrived in 2005, and its follow-up Even If It Kills Me was similarly successful. For many years, the band was a staple of the Warped Tour. They briefly signed to major label Columbia for My Dinosaur Life, but rejoined Epitaph for Go in 2012. Their most recent effort, Panic Stations, was released in 2015.
context_section_description: The band's array of influences mostly include alternative indie rock bands Superchunk, Jawbox, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Flaming Lips, Fugazi, and Pavement. Additional artists that inspired the band includes Braid and The Rentals, Elvis Costello, Pixies, Tom Waits, Ben Folds, the Weakerthans, Poster Children, the Carpenters, and the Cardigans. AllMusic additionally credits bands such as Weezer and the Get Up Kids as influences, among others. Pierre quoted Waits that "all anybody ever does is imitate their favorite artist—badly," adding, "we're just regurgitating all the crap we listened to in the late '80s and early '90s, the music that got us into playing music in the first place."
  The band's musical style is widely recognizable by its unique blend of pop punk with the Moog synthesizer. The usage of the Moog stems from Cain, who first heard the instrument employed on the Rentals' album Return of the Rentals (1995). He subsequently bought a cheap Moog at a pawn shop and wanted it to be an integral part of Motion City upon their formation. Johnson became known for his signature "Moogstand" in live performances, which consisted of a handstand on the instrument. The group has been widely attributed to a number of different genres, including pop rock, power pop, indie rock, emo, and pop punk. Joshua Cain dismissed this latter label, remarking, "I definitely wouldn't consider us a pop-punk band. Our influences are more based on '90s bands like Superchunk and early Weezer." Pierre characterized the band's music as "dirty, fast, happy, emotional rock songs."
  Nylon compared the music of their debut album, I Am the Movie, to All and the Get Up Kids. It has been described as having a "distinctly unified and identifiable style." Subsequent releases varied in style. My Dinosaur Life, for example, saw the band attempting to emulate their favorite post-hardcore acts, such as Archers of Loaf and Dinosaur Jr.
caption: Keyboardist Jesse Johnson's signature "moogstand" in 2008.[8]
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