My Dinosaur Life is my album of the year so far. I love every song from the go and it even claimed its place in vinyl I’ve shipped in from the US. So a chance to see Motion City Soundtrack at The Cockpit, Leeds was something in which no way I would miss out on. Greatest thing about this wasn’t the only one who felt like this so I had someone to go with!
And luckily again...Mike and Jesse decided to tag along too so travel wasn’t a problem. I love our little road trips to gigs. The excitement, the music, the wondering if Jesse is gunna break down and leave us stranded. Fun times.
So Leeds bound we went. Found a place to park, passed the highest cash machine in the world and headed for the station to meet Dillon and grab a Subway. Standard. After in depth conversation about ways in which to kill hookers over a 6inch meatball Sub it was gig time.
First Cockpit gig if the year so I’ll say a few words about it. Its dark, it’s a bit dingy, it’s small; it’s more like a mini airplane hangar than a ‘cockpit’. It’s Corp but Leeds. First act on was Jenny Owen Youngs, a normally solo singer/songwriter that screamed ‘JUNO SOUNDTRACK!’ at you. This isn’t a bad thing. Mixing funny with sad and rude lyrics with nice guitar riffs and a quiet yet powerful voice sounded great. Yet a bit repetitive. The Good thing about all this was the fact she had a ‘band’ behind her, members of Motion City and her own bassist assisted her in making her quiet acoustic songs in lovely harmonious tales of rise and falls of love and life. She stated at one point that this was the first time they’d ever been played together, they were impressive. Listening to her previously I was a bit worried that she would be alone on stage, that would have been dull. Thankfully this wasn’t the case.
For Motion City Soundtrack however I had no doubts at all I would be fully entertained. Their music screams good times and from Justin’s blogs and twitter I knew they were gunna funny and fun.
They came on stage to start with the great opening track from My Dinosaur Life ‘Worker Bee’. Which in its self states ‘It’s been a good year, a good new beginning....’ And that for Motion City it had. I’d say I good 90% of the crowd knew every word to all the new albums songs. Presumably the other 10% had come from been a fan of the first couple of albums. Couple of songs in and they played the BIG one. ‘The Future Freaks Me Out’ mealy needed Justin to sing “I’m on fire...” for the entire crowd to sing every remaining word of the intro back to them as loud as humanly possible. Everyone was bouncing around and having a good time. This is what is was all about. The entire band go crazy when playing, the keyboardist literally rags his keys about to the extent at point I thought he was gunna drop em.
‘Pulp Fiction’ had a warm welcome into the set before kicking into ‘@!#?@!’ which swear induced lyrics had people starting a small pit as well as smiling as singing ‘you all need to go away you mother fuckers!’. The other new song that stood out for me in the main set was ‘Her Words Destroyed My Planet’. I didn’t realise until now how big a song this is. Especially live it seems to have this feeling you wanna just jump around with arms in the air. Great stuff. Some older songs they played included ‘My Favourite Accident’, ‘When Your Around’ and the great ‘LG Fraud’. All showed that what they have on the new album they always had to an extent.
For the encore they played my favourite song off the new album ‘Disappear’.... the way in which the song starts is simply mind blowing. This showed even more live. Such a great great way to start the end of the night. The actual end was in the form of the superb song off the album Commit This to Memory ‘Everything is Alright’. Great end to a great gig. With recent rumours/self confirmations of them playing Leeds Fest... I know I won’t be missing them.
Peace
X
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