Review Summary: My Dinosaur Life is certainly a good record, and is arguably Motion City Soundtrack's best.
Label changes can often cause shifts in a band's signature sound, especially if a band jumps ship to a major label. Of course, these changes aren't always for the better. If a band's sound changes, and if it take a more mainstream direction, fans often start screaming "sellout." And they're not always wrong. Minnesota pop-punk band Motion City Soundtrack signed to Columbia records in 2008 and on Jan. 19, 2010, released My Dinosaur Life. Quite a few MCS fans weren't happy with their last record, the overly poppy Even if it Kills Me, but do they have anything to complain about now?
Not really. Though Motion City Soundtrack's sound does sound different than on past records, the change is for the better. They jumped from a more slick, poppy sound on their last record, to a more refined, edgy sound on My Dinosaur Life. Songs like "Disappear" and album closer "The Weakends" sound more like straight-up rock songs than pop-punk songs. Of course, MCS still retain their pop hooks in tracks like "Her Words Destroyed My Planet," "Delirium," and "Pulp Fiction," the three best songs on the record.
The band isn't without its soft side. "Stand to Close" starts off with a subdued guitar and piano before the rest of the band kicks in. "Skin and Bones" and "History Lesson" start off in a similar fashion.
Instrumentally, the band is about on par with the rest of the genre. Pop-punk isn't a terribly difficult genre to play, but MCS does it well. The band does a solid job instrumentally, except for keyboard player Jesse Johnson, whose synths are oddly absent throughout the majority of the record. Johnson's synths were a key component in MCS's sound, and now that they're toned down, they sound almost like a different band.
Justin Pierre, the band's vocalist and lyricist, has, at the age of 33, finally gone through puberty. That is to say, his voice has gotten quite a bit lower. He can still hit some high notes, such as his falsettos in "@!#?@!", though sometimes it feels like he's straining. While his voice now isn't necessarily bad, (on the contrary, it's quite good) he sounded much better with his higher vocals on past records.
Lyrically, Pierre is fantastic. While his lyrics tend to focus on the topic of relationships, a common theme in pop-punk music, they sound a lot more original than other pop-punk bands. Of course, relationships aren't the only topic of the album. "Delirium" is about a patient at a mental hospital, and "@!?#@!" is a geek anthem. Pierre's lyrics are interesting, though often odd. An example comes from the strongest song of the album "Pulp Fiction". "It's like a bad dream, something from the back of a magazine, black and white and cheaply put together. Like a slasher film, I'm torn in opposite directions. The plot sucks but the killings are gorgeous", Pierre sings as the rest of the band perfectly executes the hooky chorus. Pierre's lyrics aren't all great, unfortunately. "@!?#@!" is a solid song lyrically until the cringe-worthy chorus. The chorus of "Disappear" is also borderline cliche.
My Dinosaur Life is certainly a good record, and is arguably Motion City Soundtrack's best. It shows that pop-punk, a genre becoming more and more homogeneous by the second, still has some life and originality left in it.
