Motion City Soundtrack - 'I Am The Movie' (Epitaph) Released 23/06/03

After spending the last four years skulking around the punk underground, Motion City Soundtrack finally release their debut album, and in all honesty it's not really been worth the wait. As with so many emo-influenced punk-pop bands, it's completely unoriginal (surely everyone who writes about this sort of thing is sick of dredging up The Get Up Kids as a reference point over and over again...?), and while it's not lacking in catchy melodies, it's also eminently forgettable. Does anyone really get even slightly excited about bands like this?

In their defence, they use a synthesizer, which demonstrates more of an adventurous nature than most of their peers, although too often this just sounds like the organ Weezer pasted all over their mighty Pinkerton album. Indoor Living and forthcoming single My Favourite Accident are nicely sugar-coated treats lurking somewhere in the first half of the album, but they're still the Tesco's Classic Cola of emo-pop. And Motion City Soundtrack's shockingly unoriginal, decidedly unsexy pop music has clearly been bypassed by Epitaph's quality control. Their lyrical "knack for innuendo" means that, if they are a movie, they probably view themselves as the wank-tastic American Pie 2, when in reality they're more Dude, Where's My Car?. Motion City Soundtrack, then: the band you're probably least likely to ever have an orgasm to.