"You know what really makes us mad, is wasting money on CDs with only one or two good songs." "Yeah, tell me about punk!" What's up, posers? Welcome to Punk's Lotto Pod, I'm your host, Justin Hensley. I'm your other co-host, Dylan Hensley, and this is the show where we choose one year at random as like one punk hardcore emo or punk adjacent album from this year to discuss. And this week we are joined by Gordon Phillips of the band Downhall. They have a brand new record coming out this Friday, September 20th. The record is called How to Begin and you can get a copy of it from self-aware records as well as land land co-portage. Yeah, this is a really, really fun conversation. What are we talking about today? We are talking about the year 2005 and the album is Commit This To Memory By Motion City Soundtrack. This is a big deal for us. Oh yeah. We've talked around this record a lot over the years. I'm really glad someone finally picked it. Yeah, we do. We so often will skip over these big records that like mean a lot to us and then for some reason we don't ever choose them for ourselves to discuss. But I'm really glad we had a guest talk about it because when it's just you and me, we would just be like, it's real good. And that's it though. I'm really glad to get Gordon's perspective on his approach when he found this band and all this good stuff. So it's a really fun conversation. I enjoyed quite a bit of it. If you head over to patreon.com/punklotopod for one dollar you get access to all of our weekly bonus audio. Last week we did an I'm listening where we talked about the albums we listened to over the previous month. And we also have a new five dollar tier. This is our producer slash listening club tier. And what you get with that is you get your name set on the show as a producer every single week. And then you get to join us for a monthly zoom or Skype group chat where we discuss an album. And for our very first edition of the listening club, we're going to discuss bad religions, the gray race. So if you're part of this patreon tier, that means listen to the record and join us for a group discussion on it. And not sure how it's going to go. I'm excited to get into it, but it'll be a new thing for us to try out. But and then you could join at the $10 tier for a one time $10 donation. You get to choose the album we devote an entire episode to. We've got a couple of those lined up in the future as well. We're going to do those on the other side of our 300th episode, which will be next week. So before we get into the show, let's shout out our producers. So up first, we have Dave Brown, host of the podcast, One Band Five Songs, as well as writer of the blog, Oklahoma Lefty, longtime friend of the show. And I recently gested on some bonus audio for Dave for One Band Five Songs, where we talked about the iron chic discography and rated all of their albums. We also want to shout out our producer, Steve Long. He is the host of the podcast, Rebel Rock Radio, as well as Radio Unfriendly, another good friend of the show. We have Jason W, the writer of the newsletter, Songs About Chocolate and Girls, where he goes alphabetically through punk records of the 90s. I believe, what letter are we up to with songs about chocolate and girls? Are we in the Ds? Still? Yeah. Really fun. Really fun. Substack. Check that out. And our final producer, Phillips Brooks, he sponsored our episode on Ten Yard Fight and then signed up for our $5 tier. So thank you all so much for being produced on this show. And if you're interested in that, it's patreon.com/punklotopod. And let's get into the show. Enjoy this conversation with Gordon of Downhall. [music] It's all the same. If it's all the same. The one really popular. [music] So we are joined here today with Gordon Phillips of the band Downhall. Gordon, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Thank you for doing it. We have some mutual friends in common and buddy friend of the show, Josh Robbins of Spinning Out and Stuffware Records has put me in connection with you. And yeah, looking forward to this little conversation. So welcome to the show. And let's get into it. So Downhall has a new record coming out the week this episode drops. So this episode will drop on Wednesday. The album I believe comes out on Friday. It is called How to Begin and it will be released on Stuffware Records and Landland Cole Portage. And it's early. Obviously you haven't had a chance to get too much feedback. But how do you feel about the new record? Great question. And this is the only interview so far. So this is kind of the time to test out all the questions and all the answers. I feel good about the record. We've done four singles, which is more than we've ever done before. And people have been very positive and very kind about those. So you know, hopefully they like the rest of the record and we had a good time making it. We love playing it, which was a big touchstone for us. And can't wait to see if people can get a whole thing. Yeah, I mean, I've listened to it. And what I've heard from it, I really enjoyed. And I think I think it's your best record yet. I kind of went through all of them this week just to kind of, you know, get a feel for all of them and just to see how they go. And like, yeah, I really, really like the direction of this new record. Your last record, it was called proof. And it's a little darker, a little bit more atmospheric, I guess. And this record feels a lot more kind of like strip, not stripped down, but like reduced or down to like a more, just kind of, here's the basics of the group. Yeah. Was that like a conscious choice? Yeah, that's an astute observation. We really wanted this album to sound a lot like the band, you know, so there's very minimal overdubs. The mix on it is very minimal. There's not a ton of layering. There is, you know, we use all our own gear, which is something that people don't always do in the recording studio. Sometimes you get there and you see all this nice stuff and you want to use it. But it was really a big priority for us that the new albums sound like our band. And I think we effectuated that pretty well. And proof definitely had a lot of production, a lot of bells and whistles, a lot of layering. It was kind of post rocky. It was kind of, you know, ambience in a lot of ways. And I love it. I think it came out exactly how we wanted to. But I think part of, at least for me, one of the fun things about being at the end, it's tinkering and switching things up and growing and the things you like changing. And that's how we kind of arrived at the overall approach for this one. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, the idea of getting in the studio and having all this equipment that you don't normally use and then how that could eventually like change how the record comes apart, comes up, comes together. That's something I don't really think about too much, but it's definitely a realistic thing. Yeah, you feel like you're paying for it and you feel like you need to put it to use. Yeah, you think, oh, this is so much nicer than my stuff. I should go ahead and use it, you know, or I should. We should really into the classic rhythm guitar treatment is the stereo pair one down each side. And then he listened to some records and they've got two down each side and then some have a layer of clean guitar on top of that. And it's easy to get carried away because then he starts thinking, oh, you know, I don't want to have all these rhythm guitar layers be the same setup. So I'm going to use this guitar for that one and Matt Ant for that one. But on this album, there is just one rhythm guitar layer. My guitar, my amp, my pedals going down the left pan, stereo pair left. And that is very different to have it kind of be so bare and such a take really instead of kind of layering and editing and quantizing and making sure it's all locked in, just kind of keeping it a lot more raw. Yeah, it definitely comes across more live. Yeah, like this is the version of the band that I can imagine seeing live instead of like the last record, I can probably pull some of that. I haven't seen you guys live. So I don't know exactly how. Yeah, we'll pull it off, but we'll probably take more work live to pull that off. Yeah, you're in your exactly right. You should come see us at the milestone on the 21st, Saturday. And that was a big thing, because we made that album and there's drum machines, there's synth players, there's different guitars doing different things. And when we went to kind of relearn it to play it live, we were sort of having to plan out how we were going to do it, who's going to fire off this sound and do we want to mess with a sampler or a keyboard or things like that? But with this record, it really is. We set up and we play the songs and we wanted that to be kind of at the forefront from a production standpoint and an arrangement standpoint. Yeah, I mean, the record is fantastic. So how did you wind up working with Josh and Sarah self-aware for this one? Because you've done refresh records in the past for your previous albums? Yeah, you know, Josh and Sarah, we've been playing shows with forever. Every time, you know, we can, we play with Alwright or Fay or a late bloomer. And right before the record was kind of finished, there was a late bloomer show in Richmond that we played. And in the lead up and setting up that show, you know, Josh and I had been in touch about, can you guys play the show? Yeah, what about this? What about that? And then I sent Josh the record, and Josh was kind of like, you know, we can put this out if you want. And I was like, oh, that wasn't really my intention. I was kind of just sharing it among friends. And I was like, really? And Josh said, yeah, let me talk to Sarah. Sarah's the real boss around here. And if Sarah likes it, you know, we'll see what we can do and ended up working out. And they've been awesome just to work with. They're both really, they're both real rockers, which is what I say about them. They love music, they love playing it, they love going to shows, they love listening to it, they love nerding out about it. But it is rare, at least in my experience, that you have people running a record label who are very familiar with kind of the other side. Sometimes just people who used to be in bands or people who, you know, manage bands or things like that running labels. But Josh and Sarah are really, you know, in the thick of it playing in bands and touring and making albums. And they're both great running a label too. They're very organized, communicative, they get you everything you need. Right when you ask for it, they've been really great to work with from an administrative side as well. Yeah, I like the idea of Josh being like, Oh, I love it. You know, we should put it out, but I got to talk to Sarah first. And then if if he came back later, I was like, I think it's no good. I'm like, Oh, that'd be hilarious. No, it's very, you know, it's funny that like, he kind of framed it that way, but I'm sure they they come to agreement on everything that they, you know, do and don't work on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're they're so impressive. Like the project they've been working on this year with those singles a month or like some of them are eating. It's like a new version of them together, like, yeah, over and over again. It's wild. How they can do looks like any style of music. Yeah, when we were plotting out the timeline for our record, Josh says, well, Sarah and I have something coming out this day and this day and this day and this day and this day. I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, and they're all different genres or projects or sounds. And, you know, so we're going to have that going on. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then sure enough, they went and did it, you know, kind of songwriting adventure together. But yeah, really cool, really high, you know, high quality, high standard of work. So for y'all with this album, you you mentioned online and I think it's some of the press release type stuff that you have the campfire test, which I think is a really cool idea. Explain that to the listeners. What do you mean by that? Sure. So in the past, I have been very, so I'm still like pretty new to songwriting. I kind of wrote my first songs in the beginning of this band. So like 2016, 2017, I'm still trying to like learn what works best for me. And I've kind of gone about in a bunch of different ways. But in the past, I've been very inclined to kind of like a sound, you know, oh, I want this album to sound a certain way. And proof was kind of that taken to the end. You know, how can we, what can we do in terms of ambiance and atmosphere and vibe and mood and that was really keyed into those things and writing with a bunch of guitar pedals and that whole album is on baritone guitar and messing around with soundscapes and drones and things like that. And before that, we were playing in weird tunings kind of doing the emo thing. But neither of those people would sometimes ask, you know, can you do an acoustic set or do you want to do an acoustic session? And I would kind of think about it and say, ah, actually, no, I can't, I won't. And kind of as time goes by, I got into more and more kind of songwriter oriented music and thought about how, you know, even that the most extravagant arrangement of a band is like, you know, Wilco or one of these artists at its core is still a song that you can sing and strum. And that's kind of what the touchstone was for the writing process, not to let myself think, oh, you know, this could be a cool part of the song. If I really dressed it up and I got all the reverb pedals figured out and the drums were doing just that and the other, that'll be a great bridge. I really thought about and wrote this way sitting down with an acoustic guitar, just me singing and strumming. And that was kind of the idea. Could I play and sing this song around the campfire and it'd still be good instead of me, you know, hitting a really dramatic note on the low B string of a baritone guitar and saying, okay, and then imagine, you know, these crashes and drum machine and all this, that and the other, you know, cut the crap kind of and all the fluff and all the ornamentation and just is this a good song or not was sort of the standard. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably one of the healthiest approaches to songwriting. You know, you want to make sure that the song itself is good regardless of everything else. Like, I can't imagine, I mean, there's certain genres where you probably couldn't do that. I don't think you could really be like, well, how does, you know, how does Metallica sound around a campfire? You know, like, right, right, heavy music or even, you know, some more classic punk stuff, maybe you could have, but like, do you want to hear Black Flag acoustic? Do you want to hear, you know, all these various, you're right, you're right. And but it can be a good test, though, even for more like technical music to be like, does can I translate this to the most stripped down, like a single instrument and have it be effective? Like, that can be a good measure. And it's not, I mean, it's not to say that like, you know, like, is gent gonna work? You know, maybe not. But yeah, I mean, I think even like, fairly technical songs, like, if you can still translate them to an acoustic instrument or a piano, like, that can be a good test of it to be like, how much of this really does translate, like, how much of this at its core is the songwriting and how much of it is the embellishments? Right. Right. And one thing that kept happening to me is I had written a lot of long songs on proof on the post rock kind of album. And as I was kind of thinking about this song and the Capitol West song and the campfire angle, you know, I found myself editing and pairing down and pairing down and pairing down. So instances where I would have, you know, a five minute song or a four minute song, I just kept chopping and chopping and chopping because I was thinking, you know, this instrumental break only needs to really run once. Or, you know, this verse was not as strong as that verse. So I'm just gonna drop this one. And there's a couple songs that ended up pretty short, despite original drafts or iterations of them being twice as long. So there are songs on the new album that I really cut down, cut down, cut down, trying to get to the most effective version of the song. That's how you end up with the, you know, 25 minute album. I love a 25 minute album. I think I'm a big fan of the sub 30 minute LP. I think that's yeah. Those are some, those are some of the most efficient, I guess, use of the time or you could use like the writing trope, urgent sounding. Yeah, an album can be. No, obviously, like, not every record has to be like that, you know, like some records that are long are served perfectly well by, you know, the length of some of the songs because he doesn't accomplish the same thing. Like, like, I don't think proof would work as a 25 minute album. Like it works really weird. Yeah. Yeah. Because it would have been like, Oh, that's over. That would have felt like you just finished too soon. So I really, I really like that approach that you've taken to this record. Thank you. And I was reading one of the bios you have out there. And I was talking about like all the bands that, you know, were, were kind of influences on this record, like an artist, like John K. Sampson, like Shworsenbach. And then you threw out like pieballed and like the rins. And I'm like, this is like a great list of artists that I am. If I had not known who you were beforehand, and I saw that like list of names, I'd be like, I'm definitely listening to see what it sounds like. Thank you. Thank you. And it's, it's interesting because when someone says, you know, do you think your band sounds like the rent? Do you think your band sounds like Jawbreaker or just to Brazil, I'd say no, definitely not. But the idea of an FFO is a little different than that, right? You know, it's, it's not saying that your band sounds like those bands is that your new record will offer things to fans of those bands. It's for fans of XYZ, ABC. And that was something that my friend who wrote the bio had to really sell me on because I was like, I can't go in here telling people that like, it's really like Jawbreaker is a band to be thinking about when you check mine out, like, and he's like, no, but you know, there are things that people like about Jawbreaker, those people will find something in your band's album. And I was like, okay, you're approved to throw sports and buck in there. Yeah, yeah, it's really big shoes to fill whenever you're down. Sounds like John K. Samson, like, oh, really? Like, well, not really. Yeah, you're really inviting some scrutiny when you tell people that yeah, especially John K. And boy, absolutely. Right. Like two of the greatest lyricists of the era. I know. So what do you guys have planned for support for the record? Great question. We've got a release show in Richmond. The day it comes out, which we've never done before. It's pretty, it's going to feel pretty cool. Proof came out during COVID album before that. We did some release shows for, but they were kind of after the fact. So it's going to be funny to be playing the new record, kind of the day. It's available. But we got Richmond that day, the next day, Charlotte, we're playing a show in DC with Wild Pink a little bit later. And that's going to be a great time. But no, no kind of crazy touring plan. It'll probably be a little more strategic with getting out when possible. And we're a tiny band. It's it's really hard to book right now and where we used to have more success doing kind of longer DIY runs. We did one in the spring of last year and really got our teeth kicked in. It was brutal. It was the venues we played all the time. They didn't survive COVID and having trouble finding local bands to play shows. And then it's like every social media platform has been throttled. So you can't even really reach the people who follow you or want to hear from you. But it's it's just a tough time for small bands. I don't mean that in like a what was me kind of way. It's just, you know, people like you guys who have a platform and some support small bands, you know, it's it's more important now than it ever has been, just because the state of social media and the state of money and, you know, people doing things with their time is tough. It's tough for small bands. So we'll be out there. I'll get off my soapbox and then we'll go out there and play some shows to the extent we can. Yeah. And I think it's just a weird time for live music in general too, because it's not just the small bands that are having hard times. Like we see like huge artists now who are like, well, we got to cancel our arena tour because we maybe we booked too big of a place or somebody like like helmet who I would say is probably like a middle level band. You know, they're not an arena band. They're not a they're not a tiny band either, but they have a falling and even them having to cancel tours. Just like, yeah, I don't know. As easy as that, like so many bands canceling. And I really think that has to do with just people's discretionary spending, being kind of only on essentials and not buying records or tickets and some of these ticket prices. Oh, yeah. Getting insane. Like John and I went to see guided by voices. And this is not guided by voices slander. I'm sure they had no, you know, control over this. And it was like 60 bucks to buy a ticket day of. And I was like, love you guys, but 60. It's just, yeah, I think to your point live music is at a tough spot. Yeah. Yeah. That's a I guess, you know, everybody's like, watch in the wallet and figuring out, you know, what they can't afford to do. And it sucks, especially for art. That's, that's terrible for art, you know. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's not a way anybody wants to think about art and patroning art. Right. Well, I think everyone should patron downhall and check out the new record. And you can get copies of it from both self-aware and land land. Yeah. They only have 100 copies, right? That's, that's their deal. Yeah. Landland is a primarily Dan, the guy who runs it makes concert posters. And they're insane. Like if you check out the land land concert posters on his Instagram, like he is one of the premier artists kind of in that space and he works for huge clients. But he also runs kind of a small indie rock oriented label where he puts out records and got in touch with him through a friend and he expressed interest and we told him we kind of already had this thing going with self-aware. Are you interested in being part of it? Maybe, you know, exclusive variant and he jumped on it and did this really cool kind of reimagining of the album art that's going to be the special alternate album art for his variant. And that came out great and something a little, you know, special for the real heads who might want to own, you know, something a little different than the regular record. But he's awesome and we've appreciated working with him. Yeah. Well, I'll make sure to include links to that in the show notes so people can get ahold of that and hear it when the album comes out on Friday. So everybody, you put it on your calendars, you got two days. So that's right. Cool. Let's get into the rest of the show. So premise of our show is we sign our guest a year and they choose one punk hardcore emo or punk adjacent album from that year to discuss. And I gave you the year 2005. And I feel like you got back to me pretty quickly about what I'm you wanted to choose for us to talk about. And we'll get into that obviously. But what are some other records from 2005 that you were considering to talk about? Yeah, that's a great place to start. So it's funny, I was looking at the, I've added up right now, just taking a look so I can really materialize this point I want to make. And maybe I'm dating myself a little bit. But I, when I was a teenager in 2005, a lot of these, a lot of these big records who came out that they came out that year that I know a lot of people will be dying to talk to you all about. And I'm talking about, you know, fall out boy, panic at the disco, paramour. At that point in my life, I was very concerned with who was and wasn't a poser. And this was at the end, I mean, 30 seconds tomorrow, these are huge records that came out in 2005. But in my mind, and as inherited from my older sister, and the people I hung out with at school, those bands were all for posers. And I don't have a ton of daylight here between those records and the records that I ultimately picked. But there's a lot of stuff here in 2005 that I, that I did love. You know, there's an against me record and probably the main reason I didn't do trushing for a former clarity of all American rejects record that year too. Probably the main reason I didn't do stretching for a former clarity is because I did an against me album with Josh and didn't want to, didn't want to rehash all my against me talk. But the stuff that I was into that year, there's a great bond to music industry record or to get against me record. There's, you know, some stuff in the kind of like, I don't say true punk, but like not as poser corners that I was more interested than there was Andrew Jackson jihad. There was a job kick Murphy's record that I was super stoked on at the time. I want stuff that I was kind of listening to from work tour compilations or give them the boot compilations or, you know, other things that were more, I would say, in my mind, punk leaning than the kind of like, there's a Johnny Hobo record I was pretty high on at the time, more true punk leaning than, oh man, Jack's mannequin that year too. I'm telling myself a little bit true punk and Jack's mannequin in the same sentence. I think you guys get, I think you guys get where I'm going. There are these huge records in the kind of like mall emo space that I was not particularly interested in, but have really been canonized kind of in hindsight by people who I guess did like them then and were not as concerned about the poser police as I really was at the time. And I've kind of chosen one that's like a little bit in the different, in the middle there to me. And that's a long rambling answer, but that's kind of where my thought process is and was. Yeah, I think we, we may have been in the same kind of headspace around that same time period, I think. So this was 2005 Dylan had used, already started or been part of all the living yet. 2005? No, I think we started in 2006. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, close, close to what we were doing around that time period. Yeah, definitely like that mall emo stuff, not for me and not my kind of thing. Like we would watch like fuse in a buddy's house or in or MTV two and then like watch the videos and just kind of like clown on them just because it wasn't like our kind of thing. Yeah. And so like going to once I got to college, I guess that's when I started to really kind of like dig into like more of that kind of stuff. But I feel like it even took longer for some of these bigger records, like for me to really get into Paramore was within the last 10 years, you know, it's not something that I was into as a team really. But no, that was such a funny era for punk. Like for it to be so close to mainstream that we like the hardcore, like the metal core, deathcore, emo, scene core, like stuff was active in in Hickory, North Carolina, where like I was in a metal core band and like playing shows and there's there's all these like redneck kids with like flat iron hair and tight skinny jeans to just to think of that in that region and what that region was before and after. It's just like what punk was there before was like really extreme underground, crusty, gutter, punky kind of like noise shows in somebody's house and like metal sludge bands playing at like the scary biker bar. And then we have like kids spin kicking each other in an arcade in the YMCA team center for a couple of years. And then like a handful of people that are just like, you know, still trying to play music that just, you know, live there and they're like kind of booking maybe, you know, whatever small places still will give local music a chance. It's like, you know, if you're not a cover band, you know, and a region like that now, it's just like, it's pulling teeth to get it to happen. That numbers getting smaller and smaller, you know, people will end up opening their businesses or their event spaces to local small bands. But, you know, it is so funny to think about, you know, to me, and like, I know that like Fallout Boy claims, Jawbreaker, it's like a primary influence. And I was like, no, these guys are opposers and I they're always going to be posers and I will never listen to them. I'm here on this podcast to talk to you about motion city sound. But I was shocked to look at this list and see the crazy, like, so many huge albums came out that year in the warp tour extended universe. Because those bands didn't play warp tour. Paramore was on warp tour, you know, I don't know about it. Maybe Perry was on warp tour. I saw Katy Perry and I was very respectful, actually. This is a catchy song. But, um, someone I, uh, someone I work with, I think, did she is like a a Seamster Taylor, like, fabric artist. She does, she did something for the Katy Perry VMA performance. Like, I think she was part of the team for the, the costume for that. Uh, she was posting Instagram stories and it's like, oh, whoa, she's at the VMAs. What? Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. No, the, it was just an interesting time because like, all this stuff was kind of being distributed, you know, through Hot Topic, basically. And the closest mall to me was not very close, but it did have a Hot Topic. And there was no records doors, you know, where I grew up. There was one, but it closed. So the only place to buy CDs was, I think we had FYE and maybe Sam Goody turned into FYE. Other than that, you know, you're trying to find stuff that best buy or borders or Barnes and Noble. There was not any sort of specialized. And that is kind of, I remember flipping through CDs at borders. And first of all, they were like 23.99. Oh, yeah. Which is like, every dollar you have on them at that point. And flipping and like, like, considering taking a CD to the little, like, listening demo station, like based on the band name, because I just like didn't have a way to discover new music. I didn't have, we didn't have cable. So I wasn't watching MTV or Fuse or VH1 or anything like that. Like, my music discovery was like, things people told me about, or, you know, this kind of backwards way. I look at buy CDs at these stores, but, and I apologize, I was jumping the gun, but the way I discovered motion city soundtrack, they were opening for streetlight manifesto, who was like, my favorite, favorite band. Speaking of true punk. I was obsessed with streetlight manifesto, and they were playing somewhere kind of far away, like D.C. maybe. I grew up in Stafford County, which is between D.C. and Richmond. So for shows, we had to go up or down, basically. And one of the umpteen times I made the pilgrimage to see streetlight, their opener was this band motion city soundtrack, who I had not heard of. This is early. This is like, I think their first album was out. So, this might have been a three or four. But anyway, I see this opening set, you know, they shoot the lights out. They're amazing. Crazy energy. The drummer is unbelievable in a ton of charisma, and when they play short, they played like 25 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, and just like nuked it. They played so well. But for some reason, I like didn't think I should like, I'm going to follow up. I'm going to go to their merch booth and buy something, or I'm going to make a note of this band name. I saw them and then kind of forgot about them until I was at borders flipping through, and the band name jumped out at me. And that's when I bought their first CD, which had been out for a bit at that point. And then, so the the the first kind of like promo cycle that I was there for like participating as a fan was for the record that I did ultimately choose for the pod, commit this to memory. Yeah, I guess we can just segue into the album then, because that's just a perfect setup. And it would be weird to go back and talk about something else. But sorry, sorry, I'm rambling, but no, no, it's perfect. So let's get into it. Yes, you did select commit this to memory by motion city soundtrack. [Music] I am watched. I am overwhelmed. I'm also fed up with the common code, but I just hate to say goodbye to all the metaphors that I've always gotta take you here to come up with. Say it's true. Say you like me. Just for the night. For me, it's been eternity. And I have a couple what I like to call stats on the band. So motion city soundtrack were from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they formed in 1997. And this is the band's second full-length album. And it was released June 7th, 2005 on Epitaph Records. And the person on this album is Matt Taylor on bass, piano, percussion, and backing vocals. Tony Thakston on drums and percussion. Joshua Kane. Oh, nice. Joshua Kane on guitar and backing vocals. Jesse Johnson on synths and keys, and Justin Courtney Pierre on vocals and guitar. So the album was produced by Mark Hoppis of Lincoln A2 fame, and co-produced by Ryan Hewitt. Ryan Hewitt also engineered Crimson by Aquiline Trio in 2005. So Busy Man that year. Hot Hand. And the record does feature some backing vocals from Patrick Stump, a fallout boy fame. He just backing vocals on everything is all right, and Mark Hoppis also lends backing vocals on Hangman. Some basics out of the way. So for this record, it sounds like this is a case of what our friend of the show, Adam Yoh, he's a writer, he's written a lot for No Echo. And he coined a phrase that I don't even know if he even realized he's we've used it as much as he said it. But he called it like the ones you wait for. It's like the record that after you're a fan comes out and you're like, oh, I can't wait for this to come out. So that sounds like you were there. You were there for the rollout of Commit This to Memory. That's an amazing term. And I'm going to use it. So it's such a good term. And I don't think he realizes like how much I use it because it's such a great concept. It is a great concept. And I think so many of us have have the one we waited for in our brains because of the way it makes you feel. And it's funny because I would have that same borders. They would sometimes have punk mags or extended universe of punk, be it all press or whatever the other ones were that I can't really remember at the time. But I didn't really, this is pre-social media for me at least. I didn't really have a way of like participating in album cycles other than if a band or a label took out an ad in sort of one of these mags that borders happen to have kind of on time. But I remember, I remember them advertising pretty heavily Mark Offices involvement. And I thought Blink 182 were posers. So I was like pretty worried about that. I like didn't really understand what it meant to be a producer. And I had kind of heard like their stereotypical classic rock kind of like the producer came in and ruined the band kind of story. And oh man like this is going to be bad. He's going to take this band and make them Blink 182. He's going to make the drummer chill out. He's going to make the weird parts go away. He's going to do all these bad things to the band that I'm not going to like. And that was kind of, I don't even think I really knew what the singles were. I know what they are now and I've seen the videos now. But when the album was rolling out, I was like pretty in the dark except for being generally aware of when it came out and that Mark Offices was involved. So this being like one of the ones I waited for, it is in such like a rudimentary like disjointed kind of way. It's not like it would be now where I'd be like checking out every single video and reading every interview and like diving deep and all that stuff. It was waited for in a very like elementary kind of way. Yeah, it's a it's such a funny idea to be like, oh, I found this band by reading a magazine, which is like you couldn't hear it. So as you were relying on what a person wrote about it, you know, or or at least even more simple as like they look pretty cool in that band photo. Maybe I'll check them out. So many bands I thought looked cool or uncool. And I think this was like, we're sort of in iTunes era, right? But at least for me, I don't think I had an iPod yet. And it definitely wasn't for me, full swing of like every Christmas present from an aunt is an iTunes gift card. You know, my nephew kind of likes music. We're gonna get him an iTunes gift card or and you could sample songs on iTunes, you know, and this is for me at least was before CD burning or CD leaking really even. I knew it was happening and it existed, but I just didn't have access to it. I didn't know about, you know, torrenting or anything like that. I would eventually get lime wire and all these do all these heinous things to the family computer. But at this point, I was still sort of pretty rudimentary in my like music discovery and consumption. Yeah, it's so funny how even when we came up, it was easier to hear music. Like even before like people before us, like it was like, how did you find it at all? Like is it tougher? I feel like there because we have some internet access, at least in like some of that kind of stuff. I guess it was really, really relied upon like radio and MTV and a good record store. Like if you had a really good record store with people who like knew how to seriously, yeah, yeah, show off stuff to be able to to be able to have. I mean, like the 90 I think of the 90s being like, it's like, how were you guys finding anything that wasn't on MTV? Because there was tons of stuff. I mean, you know, yeah, those all of those scenes exist. All of those scenes built into what became like the the warp to our alt press, like, yeah, all of that. It's just like, you would have had to have been in the region or like you had to like hopefully live in a town that had a cool record store and like house shows and right. And you hopefully see a fire for it or you have an older friend, maybe or an older relative who's found their way into that to bring you into it. It's just such a like, yeah, we call it we call it older brother privilege. Yeah. I've got a couple of friends who really got to skip some rough years of music consumption because they had an older sibling who put them on or an older sibling who like distinctly did not put them on is like a lot of like, no, like I will not let you borrow this. You cannot burn this. You cannot rip this to your library. But no, I think that, you know, I found a lot of bands through, I think I think a lot of people are age sort of feel this way. Tony Hawk, press gator soundtracks. Yeah. You know, skate videos, other kind of like, there were other subcultures you could sort of get into that would help you find small bands and small music. But I mean, in towns without a record store and without like, people who cared working in those record stores and kind of putting people on and making recommendations. When I was 13, I asked for CDs for Christmas. And my dad went to, there was at that point, a record store called Blue Dock in downtown Fredericksburg, which is like the city that we lived outside of. And he went to the cool college kid at the counter and said, my 13 year old son watched CDs. What should I do? And he sent my dad home with okay computer, the blue album by Weezer and elephant by the white stripes. Wow, that is a, it's a good variety. Not crazy. A different kind of things. Yeah. The time period too, it's kind of like, well, 13 probably hasn't heard this radio head record or this Weezer record. So yeah, yeah. And it's crazy because like, I really didn't like radio head. I thought the white stripes were, I had some stuff I liked in some that was maybe a little, a little much for me at the time. But the blue album, when I was 13, I'm going with John Russell to see it in two days. But yeah, you know, it's just such a strange time for music discovery. And like, I would buy those warp tour compilations. And I only went to warp tour a couple times. I was not some like big warp tour head, but I'd buy the compilations because they're kind of cheaper than a real CD. I'd buy those and hit the whole thing and discover two or three bands and then like buy their CD blind if Barnes and Noble had it, or I go to the library and borrow whatever they had and ripped it. And I found, you know, I got vocal live by the Ramones from the library and stuff like that. But you're so right about music discovery. It's such a strange time. Yeah, because now it's just like, oh, you have like a million ways to get in front of people now. And now you're also fighting against a way more names than you used to. But yeah, oh my gosh, music discovery. Now you're fighting a computer basically to get heard is just I need to make sure that something some AI, some algorithm that is programmed is going to pick up on my music. And everyone is all trying to do the same thing at the same time and trying to do all of the same moves to game the algorithm. And it's just, yeah, being I appreciate having had grown up in an era of music where there was a level of work, but it wasn't impossible. Yeah, like you had to you had to be invested to do it. You had to remember names and go out of your way to be like, okay, now that I have internet access, I'm going to look up this band that I heard about. And or I'm going to look at pure volume and just look for whatever's new. Whatever's free to download at one point, whatever was free at the top of whatever genre chart. I remember, I remember checking out bands because bands I liked would wear their merch in promos or on stage or things like that. Like, I remember I checked out the gaslight anthem for the first time because Warren of against me was wearing a gaslight anthem, so I thought hoodie. And I'm sure they would have found me another way. But like the first time I shot all that name and checked them out was because the drummer in a band I liked was wearing a hoodie. Yeah. Yeah. Kids these days don't understand. I know we do kind of sound like old men yelling about, you know, back in my day, it was a lot harder it's like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. I've been when I am born late night. Like a fool. It lead me to the floor. Yeah. Can we make it? Can we make believe? I'm so full of life. It deeply sickens me. But all I can do is close my eyes and cross my eyes and hope to die, is that I'm fucking listening. Well, I'm alone. The least you can do is take it back. All the vicious remarks and verbal attacks 'cause I can't fucking stand it when you're around. Well, so for the record, commit this to memory. I'm trying to think where we want to go with this. So you kind of told us how you got into them first. So I guess something we could go in our direction. So when you chose this record, I was like, hell yeah, I have been waiting for someone to choose this record. If someone wasn't going to choose it, we would have chosen it eventually. We definitely talked about it on our 100 and 100 episode where we talked about 100 albums in one minute increments. So we talked about it for a minute on that episode. So I like you also bought Warped or Cons all the time because they were cheaper. I remember the first one I bought was probably like $7.99 and then it was like two CD songs. Yeah, right. It's like it's a steal. I can't afford not to. It's kind of my thinking at the time. And I definitely came across the motion series soundtrack on maybe one or two of them. I feel like they hit they were on a few. Oh, four oh five, maybe. I had a guess. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I think the oh four one might have had a song for mine in the movie and then like the oh five one probably had something for commit this to memory. And maybe the oh six one might have had something too. Right, but so that would have been like my first like encounter with that band. And I was always like, this band sounds really cool and really different from a lot of the other bands around. Yeah, it was like it's super catchy, but they're doing this thing with a synth that like most of these other bands aren't doing. So I definitely was like really intrigued by that band. And then by the time I went to college, this is during like the iTunes era where you like if you're on a shared Wi-Fi. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You could access everyone's library who had them like unlocked so that you could do it. And so I would just spend hours just like going through people's libraries and figuring out like whose taste and music and everything I lined up with. When you beat them like in the elevator or in the hallway or something and you're like, I gotta say, incredible iTunes man. And yeah, somebody had committed this to memory on their computer. For some reason, it was missing two song two or three songs. Classic. Yeah. It's like you just didn't like that song. So you deleted it from your computer. I want to say they cut like resolutions maybe. I was like, oh, okay. You're cutting those. I guess you're cutting the slow song. You know. So that that was the version because then there was even another, this is a very specific time period. There was another kind of software that you could download, which would then rip everything that you selected from someone else's iTunes. Like you could just like, ah, you paid for all this and put it on your iTunes. Let me have some of that too. Definitely did that a bunch. Oh, yeah. I don't even remember the name of that program. But yeah, someone was talking about that recently on, I think probably on Twitter. Yeah, and I don't remember what the name of it was. There was a brief window where if you allowed sharing of your library through iTunes, you could just take stuff straight from someone else's iTunes, like just over the Wi-Fi. I don't, I don't think that lasted very long. We got a whole to plug guys. This is a problem. Yeah. But I do remember doing that a little bit and I remember, but I also remember just being like seeing other people's iTunes libraries in college and just like going and finding them and was like, oh, you have a bunch of stuff. Can I bring my external hard drive and there and just like copy files to each other? Yeah. Computers like you can look through mine. If there's anything you want, you know, yeah, they never did. Yeah. So that was what any of this is. That's how I would have heard commitment to memory first. And then like years later when it when it became more like the zippy files, the windrar files on how you downloaded the music, then I got that the full album and like, oh, I finally can hear these two songs that I never heard. Yeah. Yeah. Which to me is a blog spot. Yeah. Which to me still, when I listen to this album and those songs that weren't on the version that I listened to so much, they feel new to me still. Like, even though like the record is, I forgot these two songs that I didn't have before. Like, I had just listened to the other one so much and, you know, we throw in something new into the track listing and throws it off for you. But my, the burned version of American Idiot, I had the last two songs were out of order. So I similarly learned the album wrong. But yeah. Okay. So you, this was not a one you waited for. This was something you, okay. Okay. No, this was one that I just came across to this album. And I loved it. And then I remember when, what was it? The next record came out. I don't think I really paid attention to it. I don't think I listened to it. And then I do remember giving my dinosaur life a listen when it was new when it first came out. And it just felt so different to me from coming to memory that it just didn't, it didn't stick. And so yeah, they kind of became this band where like, I only cared about the one record from, for me personally. Okay. Okay. And so you, you don't have much history with the first record. I've come to that in more recent years. And within the last maybe like two years, I finally like gave that one a listen. And I was like, wow, this is great. This is like right up there. It's crazy with this memory. It's just like a super high quality version of the same thing. It's weird that because I had listened to the record that came out after commit this to memory. And it just even if it kills me, yeah, it's solid. I think I appreciate it more now than I did back thing. Same. I was mad when it came out. I bought that on release day at Best Buy, because the record pool store was gone at that. And I think the borders was gone at that point. I bought that at Best Buy on release day. And I was mad about the production. It was so shined up. It was really, and I was kind of cognizant of at that point, they had music videos and they had like pretty like protracted rollout for that one. And I was, I was kind of leery of it at that point. But now I listen back and I'm like, it's long and crazy. It's long and great. Yeah. Yeah. I even listened, like eventually, I think I finally listened to like the final record when it came out. And I really liked that. And so I was like, you need to do that. Yeah. That's when I think I turned changed my mind on like the other records and finally I was like, okay, these songs are good. They just like did some things differently. But right, right. Mine has to say, what is your, what is your connection with much to soundtrack? It's funny because we kind of both came to the band independently, which is not often the case. Yeah. Usually like, if either one of us would like discover a band, we would show it to the other pretty quickly. You know, it was almost simultaneous, you know, to the point where it was almost happening at the exact same time. But like, we kind of came that we were doing it together, but we kind of came to them separately and like, I maybe, you know, I probably would have, I would have heard them on the Vans warp tour compilations. But like, I didn't listen to those as extensively as Justin did, because he's the one who bought them. So they were his CDs. So like, I'd borrow them for time, maybe hear them in his car, but it wasn't like, it wasn't something that was at my fingertips at all times to reach for. Yeah, sure. So I know it well. Yeah, whatever I heard, it didn't make an impact. But I, my like light switch, you know, flipping moment with motion city soundtrack was I was at my grandparents house for the afternoon for some reason. I don't remember what the reason was, but I was there for an extended period of time, basically just by myself. And like my grandparents were just like around doing whatever my grandfather was probably like, washing cars, because that's what he would do. Or he might have been working on somebody's car. And that's why I was there for a long time. But like, I wasn't there with anyone else, like no siblings, no cousin that my grandparents were just kind of like around. So like, I sat and watched fuse for just hours, because we didn't have cable. You know, at that point, I probably, we weren't really regularly hanging out with our, our next door neighbor who had cable, who we would go watch fuse and make fun of music videos with. So it was still a fairly new experience to get to watch fuse TV at that point for me. And I remember seeing probably avenge sevenfold videos. And like, I remember seeing like, what's the, the Cohedon Cambria video where there, it's like the Ray Harryhausen. It's probably from that record from this same year. Is that David House Atlantic? I think so. I saw that video and being like, what the fuck is this? This like, I didn't, it took me a while to get Cohedon Cambria. But I just, I kind of just like, it was almost like a reluctantly watching it, because I didn't like most of those bands. I didn't like most of those style of bands at that time. And like, but it was, it felt, it felt like I was accessing something that I wasn't supposed to have or like, couldn't have, because I didn't have it. Like, we just couldn't, you know, we couldn't afford cable. You know, so it felt like this secret thing that I was doing, not that it was like, wrong or dirty, but it was just like, you know, like, I'm, I'm, I'm entering a private space. Because it, and I, I just kind of like, made myself watch it because I didn't like what was on Cartoon Network at the time. So I didn't just watch cartoons. And there wasn't anything else on TV that I wanted to watch, but like, I could sit and watch Fuse and just like, you get something different every few minutes. And that like, and I didn't like most of it, but the music video for attractive today came on, or no, sorry, it was everything is all right. Yeah, the music video for everything is all right came on. And I was just like, immediately hooked by it. And it was just the song. The video was fun. And he's got the goofy hair. And it was just like, just thinking in that moment of watching this, like, this is like, similar to your thinking of, like, poser, you know, emo pop punk stuff that I didn't like, I was just like, this is like, that but good. Like, this is what that is supposed to be. It's like, I, I, and there's this thing, like, I shouldn't like this band, but I really like this. And it just had like, the song stuck in my head, like, for the rest of the day. It was like, the one thing I took away from just hours of sitting and watching music videos on Fuse and like, not liking any of it. And I got this one thing out of it. And then I think Justin came, probably came home from college, like on a, on a break with the album on his iTunes. I think I maybe talk, talk to him about it. I was like, told him I was like, yeah, I heard this motion city soundtrack song. It's really good. And then like, he came home and had the album on his iTunes. I was like, got to listen to, you know, you know, nine tenths of it, whatever most of the album. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just like, wow, the rest of the record is that like, it's just as good as that. And that's like my least favorite song on the album. Yeah. Kind of crazy. It's like, I thought that song was like annoying. The first couple of times I heard it is it's like, that hook is illegal. Like you can't, you can't make that a hook. You can't do that. That's out of bounds. But it's so funny to think about watching hours and hours of views and picking one. Yeah. It's like, this is the one that I'm going to be talking about on a podcast 20 years later. It's crazy. And it's, the whole record is great. Like, I just, it's insane. I loved and it was, it was outside of our, our wheelhouse. It was kind of outside of what we allowed ourselves to listen to. Like, you know, we had this marked off, like, you know, we don't go into emo. That's, that's a four in land that we don't. But there's just like, ah, this is one, one good one. And like, of course, like now I understand like where the, you know, they're, they're pulling from get up kids. They're pulling from the anniversary. They're pulling from this chord records bands from the like 90s. Yeah. The rentals, the weird stuff on these records, especially the first two, like instrumentally, musically, there's some weird stuff on these records. Yeah. [Music] Can you feel like rain when the world does sound the same in the lifelapse? The colors of the sound different, but we feel it down if I'm shameful. Oh, we're breathing with intense curses just around the bend. With our hands all tied to the face of this time, we are unbunding, ready to connect this crime. I can do a little bit of the backstory on this, the band and the record. So, yeah, so I mentioned they formed a 97. When I read that, I was like, 97. Good Lord, took them almost a decade to really take off, but they did the thing where, you know, you just have different members of the band, you, you cycle through people and it takes forever to kind of like develop any sort of like following or, or, you know, a consistent lineup. So they, it's Justin Pierre and Joshua Kane are the ones who formed the group and they bring people together and they decide that there's not really enough places for them to play in Minneapolis at the time, which I find very shocking that there weren't enough places in Minneapolis. Maybe not for the particular style of music. I don't want to hear a complaint from people that lived in major cities about places to play. They're like, okay, that's weird. But their idea was, okay, we just need to go out. We need to go tour. We need to be on the road so we can develop some sort of following that way. And so they do that. They go into our bunch. They release a handful of like singles and EPs and then they do a tour with a band called Submerge and they wind up convincing the drummer and the bass player to join motion city soundtrack. So they basically stole their rhythm section, Tony Saxon's that good. So they self release their debut album I Am The Movie in 2002. This gets them lots of attention. Lots of labels are trying to court them. You know, they're selling them out of the back of the cars, but they get on enough tours. With other bands that people saw them. So like Universal wants to sign them. And that was the label they were leaning closest to signing. But they wound up going with Epitaph just because, well-known label and punk rock and independent, like a truly independent record label that was actually very popular. And so they wind up signing with Epitaph and they reissue I Am The Movie in 2003. And then they wind up going on tour in Japan and Europe with Blinken 82. And then on that tour, they get pretty close with Mark and like, Mark, like shouted them out and like an interview saying like, this band's great. They're really good. And so by the end of the tour, they approached Mark and were like, Hey, do you want to produce our record? And he hadn't produced anything before. And he was like new to the idea. But his number one rule was like, I'm not going to do anything to change you. Like, I want you to be you. Like, I don't want to put in like, I'll do, I'll sit in on the recording sessions. He said he modeled his producing on like Jerry Finn style who did like a bunch of the Blink records. And his approach was more like listening and giving feedback and just kind of like talking through not so much the like, you should play this part, you should play that, you know, like that kind of stuff. Just more of like, don't do that, trim that down, that kind of thing. And I think engineering wise, he didn't really handle much of that. That's why this, this other guy, Brian, he would get like a co producer credit, because I think he's traditionally an engineer. So I think he was really doing all the like, the, the physical, if the hard work of like levels and stuff like that knows how to make a drum set. Yeah. Right. So at the same time, the recording, the record, Justin is going through some treatment for alcohol abuse. He, they rehearse and write in Minneapolis, but they were going to record in LA. And Justin goes out early and he stays at Brett Gerwood's house for like a couple weeks. Well, he goes through like alcoholics anonymous. I think Brett has a history of some, some substance abuse issues. So I think he was probably like, look, I want to help, you know, be a part of this, you know, getting you better type of thing. And so then the band winds up joining him. And then they do, they do the record with Mark and then like while recording, they get their own headlining tour for the first time. Wow. And then they wind up doing like 270 shows by the end of the year, which is like, how did you record an album and like tour that much at the same time? Took off on federal holidays, basically. Yeah. And then like also while trying to go through alcoholics anonymous and like getting treatment for us, like ultimately, you know, the, the alcohol problems continue into the next record. So like maybe being on the road 270 days out of a year wasn't the most conducive way to, you know, get better during that period. But yeah, it was just this like really interesting way of doing a record, you know, get somebody who hasn't produced an album before. And his whole thing was just like, you know, I don't want to change anything about you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of, it's kind of a first, as far as like a primary engineering credit to for Ryan Hewitt, because, well, I guess he had some more engineering because he had worked on Blink-182 before, but he'd been more of an assistant engineer for several years and then like 2004 leading up to this, he gets much more engineering. And then he ends up like, he is like the main recording engineer on, on stadium, Arcadium, where we're at Hot Chili Peppers record in 2006. I've ever heard of it. Yeah. And he does like, he's an engineer on an Ava Brothers record, some vlogging Molly later on, a couple of Ava Brothers records. This definitely feels like a prominent record for him though, like Crimson and this are definitely big steps up for him as an engineer. It looks like, well, then they get the, they get the big dogs involved to mix, right? This is a, yeah, Trumpinos in there and what Chris Lord algae or 100 pounds. One of the Lord algaes. It might be a, it's Tom. Okay. And they split the album down the middle or something like that. I don't remember the exact details, but I don't hear it. I don't hear any of the mix, which is like kind of crazy. Yeah, it's weird that like you can have two mixes on this record. I mean, I guess maybe they, that's where the mastering comes in and you can kind of like, even things out. Right. Right. Or, or maybe if you, like we did, stay really truthful to what your band sounds like. There's less of like a, a treatment going on in terms of mixing, but it's crazy because the album sounds perfect. Like the album sounds, it's not as scrappy as the one before it. And I think they, I think they flew too close to the sun on the one after it, but the mix on this album sounds so good. Yeah, this record just sounds amazing. Like front to back this whole album. I just love everything about it. Like there's not a single song on this record where I'm like, I'm not a fan. Like, yeah, even my least favorite song on there, I'm like, it's really good song, you know, song rocks. And it's funny because like, it definitely sounds shined up, right? It sounds like there is a, there's a budget involved and you know, you've got the who's who of pop punk singing harmony and backup vocals or whatever, but it sounds like their band. It really does despite, you know, they're talking to major labels like you said, I mean, it sounds like their band. Yeah, yeah, because they do eventually wind up getting on a major, like they did my dinosaur life, I think was on Columbia. And yeah, that was like their one major label record. And then they went back to epitaph for the last couple. So it's just, it's interesting. Yeah, that signed, signed to a major label and then opened the album with a kazoo and everybody's like, is that right? But I remember I actually had the edited version of this album. And there was some cussing on this album. And would you think LG quad was? I had it's funny because not just that one, but there's, there's instances where there's cuss words in choruses. And this was one of the versions where I guess they just muted it. So I learned all these melodies and core, I didn't know, I didn't like I there's sometimes where you're looking and it's like at a diversion and not I'm at Best Buy and I just grab it. And maybe they didn't even get distributed the explicit one to Best Buy. And then when I finally heard the unedited version, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, there's some, there are some instances where there's like an F bomb and a chorus melody. And it's like, Oh, that's why that sounded like the way it did. And he was laying down a hugely swear word right across this melody. But I had this one of the albums where I, and there's not a ton of albums I had edited versions of. And there's usually accidental when I did. But I remember hearing the real album for the first time and being like, Oh, okay. But I was very relieved that Mark Hoppes did not ruin the band. This was an album that came out at a time when I was pretty heavily scrutinizing my faves, which is another thing not to make us down 200 years old, but that was like a thing he did. When we were when we were younger, your favorite band put out a new record and you almost wanted to hate it more than you did like it. You know, you were so skeptical in every move they made and every decision they made. And now it's the opposite. Now it's like, who can compete to love their fav more, like the Stan culture and pop music right now is like something that I just have never understood and cannot relate to. But when this album came out, I was pleased with it. I was excited and I love the songs. I loved how it sounded. And I did not see them live on any tours surrounding this record. I only saw them at that time period, open for streetlight manifesto, but they're an insane live band. Like he can really sing the way he sings. Yeah, I've never seen them live. I wanted to go on when this last tour they came through. It was last year, was that last year, maybe a year before where they did the anniversary for this record. And then I think it was just like too close to COVID. And I was still like not quite ready to go to that kind of thing. And then I think some of them got COVID on the part of the tour, like the beginning part of the tour. So they had like delayed dates and like come back around later. Yeah, there have been like six legs of that tour, haven't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh wait, wait, okay, no, because there was like gonna be an east coast and a west coast. And then there was the COVID reconciliation and they maybe announced some festivals and stuff like that. But I wanted to go too. But I think I was similar to you. My risk tolerance was not quite there yet when it came near me. Yeah, which honestly, it's still not great for me too. It's just to the point where I'm like, I go to shows now and but I'm just like hyper nervous the whole time. Like I better not come home sick after this. I know. I feel that way about, you know, not to devolve into paranoia about health. But anytime I'm in a group of any size, I'm looking around like which one of you. But the the the one time I saw them live, you know, they really do burn the house down, not to not to go too close there. But they energy is crazy. He can really sing that way. The drummer is insane. You got the move player, Moog player doing the handstand. You know, it's like they're an insane live band. And they have kind of kept that throughout their career. And I think he might be not playing guitar anymore. I think I saw a picture where he was just standing at the microphone. Yeah, I read something that was like, I think maybe the most recent tour. Yeah, they brought in. Actually, I saw who they brought in. It was somebody like I recognized they brought in someone else to play guitar because he has like a back injury, I believe. Okay. And so he's currently like not playing guitar. Well, well, you know, live. Yeah, don't quite understand. I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess it kind of makes sense. I mean, not moving around as much. It's like alignment wise. I feel like it would be better for you. Zach, come to why? Why do I know that name? What was Ben is he from? I don't know that that come to I feel like I just we just like talked about this name recently on the show. Dylan, do you remember? Maybe not. Maybe it's just a similar. He's like a Grammy award winning. Weird. He's played with kebmo. Okay, lose group. So I don't know where I'm thinking of, but yeah. So yeah, yeah, he's not playing currently. Yeah, I never saw them either. Like I really wanted to and just I never got a chance to. And then when they probably were that they're most active, I probably wasn't even that interested because like I wasn't like a super into my dinosaur life or go, you know, so like I was just like, yeah, whatever, you know. And I remember, I remember them being on some like pretty big tours and that they were they on that tour that was like Fall Out Boy and Blink 182 or something like that. They did the tour. It was like right after this record, I believe they did a tour with they did a tour with panic and Fall Out Boy. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. And I'm not those guys are posers, right? I mean, I'm not going to go to a not going to pay big ticket money to go to a show like that just to watch my guy's place for a little bit. I'm probably a little bit not at them for even taking that tour. Yeah, that was the Nintendo Fusion tour as well. So I'm sure I'm sure the branding kept you way to like, yeah, you think I'm going to go to that? No, I, because I didn't have much interest in and I even though I love the number of big band, I didn't like going to shows that size because there was a couple and I think Motion City soundtrack did a couple tours like opening for big, big stuff like that and maybe they would have come to DC or something. I just didn't bother. There was one that was like, there was like a Honda tour. Yeah, I just saw that. What was that? Were they on? It was the Honda Civic tour with panic at the disco and Phantom Planet. Yeah, I skipped the Honda Civic tour as well. At this point, I am on social media and I am following bands I like and checking out what they're doing. And I'm kind of like, nah, but which record is it that Schlesinger is involved with the next one? Yeah, it's even if it kills me. It's him. It's a weird group of people. It's like Eli Janning from like Girls Against Boys, Adam Schlesinger and Rick O'Kasek of the cars. They all worked on that record together. And maybe there was beef or something like that? Yeah, Justin said that he thought the whole experience was specifically with Rick was like, he said, he just confused me the whole time. And they just didn't have a good time. And he had writer's block during that period too. And it was just like, it was kind of a let down. Maybe that's why we didn't resonate with that record because like he's going through writer's block and then you have three producers and one of them's not gelling with the right. Right. And I remember when Rick O'Kasek way past his prime. What boardroom was that collab dreamed up in? And that's such a funny combo because it's like it's very nerdy. It's like a real heads, no kind of selection of songwriting people. And looking back on it now, it's like, what the hell? Why did this even happen? I bet they went with Rick O'Kasek just for the Weezer connection because we know the rentals were like a big influence on their sound. So that's probably why they wanted to use real yet. I mean, it makes sense because there is that car's power pop embedded super deep in motion city soundtrack. Yeah, yeah. If anything, it makes sense. But in fountains of Wayne, I mean, I remember seeing like really nice stuff that Justin said about sloshing your aftery aftery past and like he was talking about how it was like a complicated time for him, but like the interactions with with Adam were really positive. And it's funny that like those those bands are like so much more down the middle than motion city soundtrack. It's like motion city soundtracks like the experimental band in the room between like the cars and fountains of Wayne, you know, like, we're gonna get we we're gonna get freaky here, guys. And well, that's where like Eli Janney would make sense. Yeah, right. But because he was apparently Eli Janney was a pack he had. I think they were friends with Eli Janney before that record too, because I want to say there's something about Eli, like recommending someone else. I don't know what the exact what it was, but like they were definitely talking with him before around commit this to memory. So yeah, I feel like one of the like going from like Mark Hoppus to those three guys is like so weird and funny. But when I look back, I really like even if it kills me. We're not talking about that record on this pod, but that album, I didn't want it at the time, but when I look back now, it's like it's some really good songs. The production is again crazy shiny. And just the way these guys play is so interesting. The way these guys are kind of like the sum of their parts in terms of the individual musicians is a really good example of, you know, the value of being in a band. And I think that's further underscored when you listen to Justin Solo stuff, because you can kind of, which is good. And I like, you can really discern what his contributions to the band are, not just if it's playing and it's thinking and it's writing and his influences and what he reaches for sonically. You know, you can really tell like, look at those guys in the band, like they're, it's more than the, you know, it's more than just you think about the front front person of the band kind of being the division. But these guys, other guys in the band really were adding a lot, whether it's the crazy drumming I've mentioned time and time again, or, you know, the synths, which are so uncharacteristic and really do recall Reggie in the full effect, get up kids, tones and parts, just like these like little, bright little synth leads. He's not putting down pads or playing chords or playing piano. He's just kind of, we you, we you playing little synths leads. And there's a really weird guitar parts too. Like this band has some weird guitar playing. I think I think it's the basis through things harmony. Is that right? Yeah, it was, let's see, Josh, what is backing vocals? And so does we have the bass player does too? Yeah, I think the bass player might be the primary backing vocal person. They really were just like a crazy, good band unit. Yeah, this record, it's interesting because like it, it's kind of hard to like pinpoint exactly what they're, what you would label them as. They got labeled like as emo and like pop punk a lot, but they were also like borrowing really heavily from like indie rock. You know, they mentioned Superchunk being like a huge influence on them. Sonically, which you get, I guess there is a little bit of that like power pop element to this record that you don't, you don't really have with a lot of the contemporaries from this time period. Like everybody else is just going like pop punk. But you listen to this record and you don't think that that is, that's not who influenced them. They weren't influenced by pop punk bands specifically. Like they were more, yeah, like the indie rock stuff. And like you could call them emo, you can call them pop punk. And I guess ultimately that's where you was kind of, you kind of put them in emo, but yeah, they were just so drastically different from so many of their contemporaries. The lyrics, the lyrics for me were what I call those other guys posers and they were playing the same shows on the same labels in the same places and had the same videos playing on the same channels and merch sold in the same stores. But yeah, there was a maturity that they kind of carried themselves with. And maybe it was from their first six years or whatever it was of being a band. Maybe it was because there are influences like you're saying or more in the indie alternative kind of space, but they just for me were, and I also probably, you know, I was a teenager and they were not as popular as Fallout Boy. So I was able to, you know, position myself in a certain way and like them. But they definitely have that kind of like when you listen to all the pop punk records of the day, their production doesn't sound like this. Their guitars don't sound like this. Their drums don't sound like this. Like they are able to sound like real people playing real instruments, but still be really shined up and presented in a way you could put on fuse or you could have on a work tour compilation. They kind of like split the difference on a ton of different moving pieces and spectrums and levers and things like that. And like, and maybe would be a bigger band if they played ball a little more in in certain ways and weren't writing kind of strange parts, strange songs, abstract lyrics. Maybe their career would have been different if they had hired someone else and then heavily produced right at the time it mattered because it kind of feels like commit this to memory would have been their their cresting wave, you know, would have been the time to get in while they're getting good. All these other people that I was set off when I was scrolling the list, they sure did. And we love this record, but I don't think that it reached the heights that, you know, their contemporaries did. It was it is still their most successful record at this point. I think they said like the most recent like verified numbers are like 250,000 copies. It is certified gold. Cool. I think Justin says though, like the real number is closer to 500,000. I'm assuming that's probably based more on what they sold to combined with, you know, stores and sound scans and all that kind of stuff. It hit number two on the billboard independent charts when it came out. And then it was like number 75, I believe, I'm like the hot 100 or no, the billboard 200. That's the album chart. Yeah. So like this was their their biggest moment culturally. Like this was their their. Yeah. But you're right. I wonder if if it was a little glossier, if it was with like, I don't know who was producing those kind of records around this time period, but it would have done even better, you know, if they'd gone in that direction. I don't and yeah, maybe maybe they were a little older than I don't know this. Maybe they were a little older than some of these guys who were willing to, you know, is just an older than Patrick Stump. Is he older than Brendan Yuri? He feels that way. I don't know what the answer is. Yeah, I'm not happy, but I wouldn't actually be surprised if they're the same age because the dude from Hawthorne Heights was like 30 and singing, you know, I bet he was. But my wrists and block my eyes. Yeah. Um, posers. They just knew how to write to their audience, which I think that's that's probably part of what keeps commitments to memory or keeps motion city soundtrack from being a band. They had like the artwork of those kinds of bands. They sure did. But it was album covers. But they're really bad. A lot of their t-shirts look ugly. Really, really ugly. But they, you know, the songs aren't, they don't feel as corny. They're complex. Yeah, they're dense. It's not going to reveal itself to you the first time you listen to it the way a pop punk radio hit wood. And they're not singing about the problems that a teenager relates to. They're singing about alcoholism, heavily anxiety. I think he sings about OCD because I think he's diagnosed with that. Like mental health issues that like, yeah, Brandon Yuri and Patrick Stump are not, you know, singing about that. Though that being said, I looked at their ages. Is quite a few years older than them. Justin was born in 76. Patrick Stump is born in 84. And Brandon Yuri is 87. So. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So 76. What does that make him? Almost 50? He was almost 30 when this came out. So he was more like the home rights guy. And that makes sense because his influences are, you know, and also when you get into the system in that way, and what you want to do is succeed, you're willing to play ball a little bit. But when you have an identity as a person, as a musician, as a music consumer, and you're a guy who listens to Superchunk and, you know, Fugazi and the cars and Reggie in the full effect, you're going to make a more complicated record. Yeah, I think they were also like really into like the promissoring and braid and a lot of those like the second wave emo bands instead of the, I guess there's technically third. I think they're third. But yeah. Some of whom they might have toured with at some point maybe. Probably. Like especially the like late 90s run, like before the LP, the first LP. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember exactly. I feel like they were on some of those shows. But you know, to your point being, it means old enough to have real problems and to probably know it, such as the alcoholism and you know, he's been doing this band when this record comes out for eight years already. Yeah. He's he's already, you know, fallen in and out of love with it and probably his heart broken by it a few times and I'm not projecting here, but you know, probably. Yeah. It's yeah. It's it's very interesting to think about someone who. So he's 30 when he does this and he signs to a major label at 35, six something like that. Yeah. Whenever they have that dinosaur life record came out. Yeah. Five years later. So it's probably 34. Yeah. Yeah. And it comes back to his friend Brett after that and yeah, they're they're very interesting. Like there they were opening a streetlight manifesto tour. Yeah. Yeah. You know, which at the time, I mean, now streetlight manifesto can sell out 1500 caps when they feel like touring, but at the time, I don't remember the venue specifically, but it was not big. At the time, it was like, you get a streetlight manifesto tour offer and it's like 300 caps or something like that 500 caps maybe. And there they were, but they, you know, special band who I feel like should still have some good records in them to make. I feel like he could probably still write a song and those guys can all still play. They do it live. If he, I bet he could write good songs and they could make a good record now if they wanted to. Yeah, they have done some stuff. I was looking up, you know, they wind up breaking up in 20, 2016 and then reuniting in 2019, like, not very long of a stretch. I guess just needed to break more than anything. But they, they haven't really done anything new. The only thing that I found, they've done tours. They did a, they did a cover of founds Wayne song. They did. I think they put a song out like last week or something, right? Let's say the group released the single stop talking in August 2024 to coincide with the theatrical release of the 2024 film, Dee Dee. I will admit I have not listened to stop talking. I have not either. Maybe I should add some more for this. I'll check it out and follow up in the email thread. But yeah, I saw on my like Spotify release radar, Motion City is down track and I was like, that's got to be a fluke of some kind. Or one of those. Have you seen these like AI hardcore bands? Like they're just making AI versions of like Earth crisis songs and like snap case songs. And now they're like popping up in people's like playlists because like they follow Earth crisis. No, like I bet you'd like this computer Earth crisis. Actually, I got to see snap case for the first time two years ago at the avail festival they do in the summer here. Crazy. Yeah, we saw them, we saw them at Fest in like the last one before COVID. Yeah, 2019. Yeah, that was wild. That was like they were so good. They were a snare drum sounded crazy. This record, it's fantastic. Like it's one of those records that like I when I was listening to it, it's one of those albums that like I've heard so many times I've talked about this on albums in the past where like if it's an album that I know super duper well, like the music doesn't even feel like music anymore. Like I just know it so well anymore. Yeah, you can't hear the music anymore. You have to like fixate very closely like actually like pick out things because it's just so embedded in my brain. Like how this record goes. And it's funny because I was like, what am I going to talk about about this record? And the answer is kind of just like I mean all of it. It's all it's all one. It's all connected like the lyrics, the production, the music they played, the takes they got, the tones they got like it is. And I think the album is very thematic. You know, when you tell me that you know he's struggling with alcoholism, he's going to AA, you know, like this sounds, it's like a partying, drinking, hangover, you know, celebrating like vicious life's like vicious cycle of the lifestyle of someone in their twenties who is, you know, in a situation they weren't prepared for and confronting it basically. And like when the imagery of like New Year's Eve and like New Year's Day, like making resolutions, like, it just has that feeling to me. It does feel like somehow they captured that kind of like sentiment. I don't know if you do this, but I when I try when I remember to listen to this record on New Year's Day, every every year I can because there's the two songs specifically about New Year's. And I think they even said that like the it's because like what he it was around when they were recording, I think. And so that's where a lot or writing maybe more round is writing because he said like fans have come up to him and said this is like a winter record for me, which it's like a really like super poppy upbeat record. But yeah, content wise lyrically, it's like not a like a happy time album. Yeah, it has a lot of it has a lot of similarities to like weaker thans records where you feel like the kind of introspection that he's doing in the lyrics and like the even really the way that the instruments sound like they're brighter and chillier sounding. Like it it feels like a record that yeah, it does feel like I mean, there's kind of two New Year's records or two two New Year's songs on the record. And it feels like just generally the kind of record where you're like taking stock of your life and assessing, you know, the things that you put value in and the the relationships that you have and how your actions in the recent period of time have impacted those relationships. Like there's there's so much like self-assessment and just like processing that he's doing in the lyrics and it feels not that heavy. Like yeah, yeah until the end and like that like hold me down as an album closer like crazy crazy. I was like this record is super familiar. It's really fun. It's catchy. There's funny clever lines like there's just cool interesting parts where the music interlocks and does these just cool interesting things and then like it hits that last song and I was just like I've never been hit emotionally as hard by this record of that song as I was listening to it for this episode. I was just like I don't know why just didn't like exactly the right headspace to just be like get to that song and like we'll just like just lean on the counter and stop to what I'm doing. And I'm like whoo and yeah yeah you're so right. And the thing about that song is like it really is like meditative and like hypnotic and like but it is so light. Like all of these like these melodies are so pop you know bubblegum and just like pop punk and like and the weaker than his comparison is really really good and not one I ever thought about and does kind of play back into this four fans of thing. Yeah I would never tell someone that the weaker than sound like motion city soundtrack and they're not next to each other on Spotify for a reason but there's like elements of both of them. It's like you could call both of these pop punk if you wanted to. It would be kind of diminishing to do that and it is sort of surface level but like they got all the hallmarks of pop punk. There's this layer of like sentiment and like emotion but without being cheap about it and like kind of cold. Like you said like it was just something with both of those two bands that is very like I don't know how to describe it but you're so right about that comparison. And it's just it's the yeah it does feel wintery it's the wintery yeah that that post holidays when it's like well it's dark super early and I have a few hours of sunlight. And maybe there's some element of that in the production approach like temporally that like 2000s-ish kind of like we're still sort of figuring out what Pro Tools is going to be you know like there's digital stuff for sure happening here. I wouldn't call either of those band records like super digital or like over produced or anything they still sound good and like they hold up well compared to a lot of stuff from the time period. So it's maybe like I have an epitaph size budget but I am a little bit more mature and a little bit older and I have a little more diverse influences when I get to the studio and I'm calling on references sonically that are more advanced or you know prestigious or whatever but it is being filtered through the same kind of machine that these like records that now sound over produced do. Maybe there's something in there with the coldness and the like the feeling of it all. He did actually explicitly state John K. Samson as an influence on his lyricist record. He did this John K. Samson Benfolds and Tom Waits were his three primary lyrical influences. I hear Ben Folds for sure. Yeah I hear Ben Folds for sure and I never think of John K as being someone like funny. There's humor in what he writes for sure but I think of motion cities soundtrack and Ben Folds both having like humorous moments of like lyrically having these moments that are sort of silly not silly but just like clever I guess. Yeah they have a similar kind of like sardonic yeah you know sort of edge to it. John K feels like funny and like a humorist kind of like like a Canadian humorist John K. You know a Prairie Home Companion kind of like yeah insanely dry. It's really humor. Is that a joke? I don't understand. Yeah I can't like are you serious about that? And then that but I definitely think of like am I remembering wrong when something came out and you said July? Yeah yeah so like this dropped in the middle of summer and you're like what that doesn't make sense for this album. I guess that's why you make everything is all right the single I mean but yeah. But even I feel like the videos look cold because then like let's get fucked up and die like the videos like walking in the snow and like Minneapolis so like. No I am with the people that say this is a cold cold album for them and like the drinking references the New Year's references like it is very like it all ends itself together to make me really wish the album art was a little better. I've got this on vinyl and making it bigger does not make it better trust me. It makes it weirder because like I got I like hunted down a copy of this on vinyl because it was it was out of press for a really long time. I think it's been repressed since then but I finally got a copy and for a decent price like 20 25 bucks not too bad. And then when I saw the artwork on vinyl I was like it made it worse. How did you make it worse? This is one of the albums that like I did the same thing I was like I need to own this let me get on this dogs and do the work and it shows up and I was like oh yeah that's how I remember it because because in the way it all progressed we went from having CDs which it's at least tactile and you can hold it in your hand and then album art trunk right it got put on iTunes and then it got put on phones and then Spotify and and if you're a vinyl person which I'm gathering that you are seeing album buying a record that you had in iTunes or in Spotify predominantly and then you get it back and you see it on 12 inch for the first time and you're like oh okay. Yeah there's some records that like I just had them on like the little image on my iTunes and then like I finally saw it in real life and I'm just like that's what that was the whole time like I didn't even know what the image was. I know I know or like sometimes you'll buy a record of something that came out in that same kind of time period this bid where they really weren't pressing records really or if they were it was very unlimited yeah and like so the album art was never generated for the purpose of being in an LP layout and it's like pixelated yeah oh yeah and I'm like double checking and I'm like do I have a bootleg of this or like no it's just like this album that came out on whatever label in 2006 was never intended to be on vinyl and like the like the original copy of this album art is probably like 600 by 600 like it's. I got a copy of when Lucero reissued rebels robes and scoundrels on vinyl yeah like that was like the same time period like 06 or 05 something like that perfect time period for it yeah and the vinyl copy they they decided for this record to like crop out all the like the border stuff and just like zoom in on like the photo image in there and it is the most pixelated album cover I have ever seen yeah why did you do this just use the original art at least yeah it's so funny I have and I really really hunted it down I have one of the actual very limited it's not worth anything but sing the sorrow one of the copies of sing the sorrow by AFI from when it came out and it's bad I mean it is like exploited to oblivion so when they did the anniversary reissue I bought it again because I had seen that they did get a better up scaling or whatever and I could look at it and not be like you got to get one of those cameras that can blow up an image yeah like a refotograph it at a way higher resolution to blow it up or use some AI that can generate the little the between of all the but um the real rubbery looking AI upscaling yeah but uh but it is really funny that like this album like we're talking about it's so thematic and so cohesive and so like evocative of sentiment and then you see the album Martin you're like this is a warp tour CD it looks like yep you see it looks like it looks like a t-shirt you could buy at like threadless three yeah you remember threadless yeah I knew this guy in college who I don't remember how it worked but you could get shirts on threadless on kind of like a freelance kind of basis and um he like a submitted design I guess and he it got put on threadless and they paid it like 150 bucks and he was like I'm rich I got a design on threadless 150 bucks like look at me and it ended up selling like 10 000 of them whoa yeah it was it was like one of them but one of the best selling designs ever on threadless and um and and he was he was like pretty so like clear-minded about it for being 18 or whatever he was like yeah I mean I I got paid what they said I get paid I didn't know nobody knew you know threadless has the platform and the reach and everything and yeah it was like in the threadless like best sellers page and yeah great well there's a I think we've said yeah really say about this record 100 yeah thank you guys so much for having me on yeah thank you for doing it and choosing such a important record to both of us so it's it's really nice to uh have a third voice talking about how great this record is because I'm gonna go listen to it right now it's one of those records too that it's just like you think about the songs and you want to hear them again yeah even though I literally just listen to it today us talking about these songs I'm like nah and I want to listen to it again uh before we go what's everybody's fave song on the album right now ooh um let's see let me look at my track listing real quick um or at least top top two or maybe even three um when you're around yeah feel like rain and hold me down final answer I'm going to gosh I'm going to agree with when you're around I think that's like just an absolute standout track on here make out kids I really love a lot yeah and I'm gonna go check it today yeah okay I would definitely say when you're around I definitely agree I hold me down as well that um I've always really had a soft spot for better open the door yeah yeah no idea what it means don't need to know what it means yeah when you're around is one of the ones that had a really convincing edit it was in the chorus you know because I can't stand it when you're around and and it was just gone it was just kind of like a like a health kind of like a a jerky melody and I was like it's a weird band they do stuff like that and uh because I can't stand it it works and then the first time I heard it I was like what every time every time in the chorus she's like I can't stand it I'll find you guys that like a youtube rip with the edited version or something it really it really is like it works without it but when you hear it with it you can't go back yeah right yeah like what why do they take it out it's like well yeah fuck in the chorus yeah a big one a big yeah a huge chorus this look one of the big singles on the record is let's get fucked up and die like let's get one and die yeah it was like no no stuff let's get stuff and yeah I was like something happened there um but no one year around I had no idea no idea well thank you so much for doing the show with us uh please tell everyone where we can follow you online all that kind of good stuff downhall band um d-o-w-n-h-a-u-l new record coming out to uh september 20th yeah be there or be square yep two days after this episode goes live so no excuse to uh give it a listen so all right well thank you so much and everyone else thank you all we'll talk to you next time can't wait talk to you soon to order punk called a 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