Interview: Motion City Soundtrack on creating their first new album in a decade
by Diane
October 03, 2025
Motion City Soundtrack are barreling into the future that once may have “freaked them out” with a new record that sounds as nostalgic and energetic as ever. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, the Minneapolis-bred band’s first record in 10 years, features their signature sound fans have known to love over the last 30 years. It’s the emotive, bright and bold singing, neurotic lyricism, ultra-catchy choruses, hard-rocking riffs, and — not to mention — that can’t-miss Moog synthesizer swirl.
Motion City’s impact has led them to become Minnesota’s most commercially successful pop-punk/emo band, having released seven full-length albums, toured the globe, and worked alongside some of the most influential producers of their genre. Mark Hoppus of Blink-182, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, or legendary emo producer Ed Rose are just a few of those names.
Now The Local Show’s Artist of the Month, Motion City Soundtrack caught up with The Current to talk about their journey to new music after a long hiatus, their emo legacy, guest-heavy appearance at MN Yacht Club Fest, and more.
Catch Motion City Soundtrack live at Palace Theatre in St. Paul on Feb. 14, 2026.
Transcript edited for length and clarity.
Diane: This is Diane, host of The Local Show, sitting across from three members of Motion City Soundtrack [Jesse Johnson, keyboard; Joshua Cain, lead guitar; Justin Courtney Pierre, vocals/guitar], Minneapolis legends. I'm so excited to be sitting across from you during a pivotal time in your lives. Your seventh studio album, first in 10 years, is The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World. Isn't that wild, though, to come back from 10 years of not releasing an album and now you are. How do you feel like you got to that point?
Joshua Cain: Brute force.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Josh, just like dragged me along.
Joshua Cain: A bit of brute force. I mean, we kept talking about making a new album for a while, back and forth. Didn't know. We wanted to do it. We had a lot of ideas. And we're creative people that are constantly making up stuff and then not doing it for a month, and then also making a few songs. It took a point where we realized, "Oh, wait, we don't have a management team like we used to, and we're not doing it." I was like, "I have to actually do it, like the first record." I have to just start scheduling it and make it happen. And so that's where it started. When you're like, "let's go."
Justin Courtney Pierre: And I think timing, too. I know I was very excited to write 10 years ago, and then for the last five years, I was dealing with some other stuff in the physical, mental realm. I can only focus on one thing at a time. So it's great that I have people that can … They're, it sucks, they're basically my handlers at this point. I love doing it. I just need to be put in front of a place where I can do it, and then I'm like, "Oh, I remember music, or whatever it is."
Joshua Cain: At this point of doing it for so long, we all have this point where you have to be reminded of how awesome it is. Because there were members of our band that were not super stoked on the idea of making a new album when we were talking about it. There's a reality that we need to do it if we want to continue to have this be our job, even if nobody likes it. You have to put out music to keep touring. You don't necessarily have to get big off it. But there's no way to make it work otherwise. What I've learned with my band is, if people are hesitant, if you force them into it a little bit. Even if people are telling me that they don't like this, or Justin saying, "I can't finish," I know that those feelings are temporary. They feel big to these people in those moments, but they can get to the other side of them and then be really happy with what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's a tough game to be making people do things that you feel like they're telling you they don't want to do. You're like, "You're gonna be happy you did." It's a weird game.
Justin Courtney Pierre: He's really good at big picture stuff. The only thing I tend to care about is if I like what I'm doing within that. I can only focus on one thing at a time. Especially when outside of music life, trying to learn how to not be anxious all the time. Only knowing how to do things once there's a deadline or stress, you're constantly combating two different versions of yourself, it's like, "I'm almost there."
Joshua Cain: It's almost like we had a lot of material to write an album about.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Oh yeah, that too.
You mentioned you just put out albums to continue the job, to be able to keep touring. This is a fantastic album. The singles that you have already released, what I'm hearing is so good. It does feel like the roots, and it feels so nostalgic to listen to these songs. "She Is Afraid," that's such a great single. Talk to me about that one.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Josh's guitar part was the first thing. I just loved it, and I kept saying, "I want to do something with that. That is a song." Not like I had anything to do with it, but his guitar part was just so exciting to me. And oftentimes, I think we do that. Somebody has a part, and if it excites us, like we just follow that wherever it goes.
Joshua Cain: It's really freeing to make an album where nothing's on the line, there's no expectation. Well, there's expectations of my own that I want to make something great. Different records we release at different times, my personal approach has sometimes has been skewed by like, "Oh, we're successful, now we need to make an album that we can continue success with," or "We've been playing on tour. It's been hard to sing these songs. Let's write an album where I don't have to sing as hard." Nothing's wrong with the albums we've made, but those, they do get in the way with what you could and what songs you might put on an album. This one was like, "No, I want to capture what we were, but as good as we are now."
My first experience with Motion City Soundtrack was in 2004. I saw the lineup for Dashboard Confessional and the Get Up Kids. I hadn't heard of Motion City Soundtrack yet, but I was like, "Oh my gosh, I especially need to go see the Get Up Kids." I was obsessed with the records, and so I walk in, and immediately I was like, "Whoa. This band's energy." And the big thing that stuck out to me was the Moog synthesizer, because it felt so novel in this style of music. Tell me about carving a space for something like that instrument?
Jesse Johnson: Well, let's not forget that the Get Up Kids also had keyboards. James Dewees played keyboards for them. So they helped carve the way for us, definitely.
Joshua Cain: They're a band that we liked a lot, too. I mean, they had similar influences as us. The second record has the same MG-1 on it.
Justin Courtney Pierre: And we recorded the first record we did with [frequent Get Up Kids producer] Ed Rose.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Well, I'm glad that my weirdness helped make that happen.
Jesse Johnson: Yep, we recorded it at the Get Up Kids' studio in Eudora, Kansas. Technically, we were in Minneapolis maybe the first time I met Justin. You said you liked me to be in the band because I had the red velcro shoes.
Joshua Cain: We had added keyboards and we were messing around with it before we had a keyboard player. Justin used to play as well.
Justin Courtney Pierre: And you.
Joshua Cain: Guitar and keyboard. No, obviously on stage, he would play guitar and keyboard. On a song like, "My Favorite Accident," he would play the keyboard part and not guitar, and then go back to guitar for other parts. So we wanted to add the keyboard player. I worked with Jesse at Pizza Luce. He had a great band, like a punk rock thing where he was insane on stage playing bass. And I was like, "You want to join a band? We need someone that's gonna go for it."
Jesse Johnson: And I was like, "Sure."
Joshua Cain: He was like, "I don't know how to play keyboard." I was like, "We don't either. We'll teach you."
Diane: Wow, that's crazy. It is such an integral part of your sound. You think about "Everything is Alright," and "The Future Freaks Me Out." Those are two big iconic songs, and the keyboard part is such a big element of it.
You are such a band, because you write off of each other. You're very much working. You're constantly in communication with each other of how to bounce off ideas. You've toured the world playing with all the greatest emo, pop-punk, alternative rock bands for 30 years. This is insane.
Joshua Cain: [Working with] Patrick Stump on "Particle Physics," we've never written with anybody else for any of our music in our band.
Diane: Isn't that something? How did that happen?
Joshua Cain: Well, it was a strange thing. We'd asked him to help us. Long, long story short is we sometimes write songs or write a part and just an amazing verse. So catchy. It's awesome.
Justin Courtney Pierre: I can write a verse, can't write a chorus.
Joshua Cain: But sometimes, when that song, sometimes he can't get there with the next part, right? We can never figure it out. They're okay, and the songs are fine. We felt like there's always a missed boat. And with this record, there was a lot of load on Justin to finish a lot of stuff because he was in and out of whatever we were doing and timing of things. And I was like, "Well, there's a song I love," and he's got other things he's working on. Patrick had talked to Sean, because they're good friends. They made records together. And he basically was like, "Patrick really wants to do stuff." And I was like, "Oh, I'll reach out to him and send him some stuff." Then he just randomly was like, "Hey, I've been humming this idea in my head that feels like a Motion City idea. And so I just recorded it. Here it is. I'm not a lyricist." It's like, "Oh my god." First time I heard I'm like, "Oh, it's great."
Justin Courtney Pierre: He wrote the chorus. I maybe changed a few words here and there. Then I had to come up with some ridiculous verses. Josh helped me with that too.
Joshua Cain: That was a long road.
Justin Courtney Pierre: I went through so many iterations of that, until we found the right balance of stupid, funny, and serious.
Justin Courtney Pierre: There's a lot of amazing young bands that sound like the music I've been trying to write my entire life, just being obsessed with these bands in the '90s. And I think it's because they didn't grow up during the time. They have a different perspective of it. I think the same thing can be said about Patrick not being us, but being a fan of us, being able to tap into something that I'm not even able to. That's really cool. And also we're the same person, and we both think the other doesn't like us very much. But we've rediscovered that, oh no, we actually do like each other. Or no? Yes.
Diane: Well, I gotta ask, because this recently happened, and I felt like it was iconic. You got sick and Minnesota Yacht Club Fest happened, and you pulled it off with special guest singers, including Patrick Stump and including Ber and members of the Gully Boys.
Joshua Cain: It was a very stressful week because we were waiting to see if he got better. He told us, "I really can't breathe and I'm coughing a lot. I'm worried about my voice." We still had six days. So it was like, "Okay, we'll see what happens." The guys got into town. We started rehearsing without him because he couldn't sing. And then it was just progressive. Once, it was like, "Oh, I'm going to the ER today." I had mentioned to Patrick that we were in trouble and we might need some help, even if Justin showed up. But then I had to send Patrick a text and be like, "Hey, how do you feel about singing like, six to eight songs?" And Ber. Our friend Brad from Now, Now, they used to live together. I guess she was sitting on the couch next to him and was like, "Yeah." And then she came down was scrambling to learn the songs. She's like, "I know you guys," but we're like, "You're gonna sing 'Last Night,'" which was like, "I don't really know that song."
Diane: She can figure it out. She's a pro.
Jesse Johnson: Nailed it. Like, just walked in. Pro, it was great.
Diane: Oh, so she really knows it.
Joshua Cain: Yeah. And [Nadirah McGill of the Gully Boys] was like, "Can I sing? Because 'Mary Without Sound' is my favorite song and my top Spotify listen last year."
Diane: And they've been on tour with you, so yeah, of course, they're gonna know your songs really well.
Justin Courtney Pierre: They're so they're my favorite local band. They're amazing.
Diane: I have to ask, because you definitely will forever be a part of the the zeitgeist of the pop-punk and emo movement, which is just so massive when it comes to bands like Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, and then even some of those earlier bands, like I mentioned, like the Get Up Kids, or Sunny Day Real Estate. You were influenced by the Pixies and Superchunk and Radiohead. When you really came into it, this was such a huge movement. Can you speak a little bit to that?
Joshua Cain: It was very lucky of us to stumble into this. We were just making the music we made in our little practice space. And then we were like, "We should try to write something really poppy." That was the trick.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Seven-minute-long songs.
Joshua Cain: We had these really weird, very emo, more Sunny Day Real Estate-leaning, more angular.
Justin Courtney Pierre: Josh and I were singing back and forth too for a while.
Joshua Cain: I remember my brother had said something to me. My brother, who passed away recently. He named our band as well. Named the first album, by making fun of Justin as well. I was like, "Actually, that was a joke, but I am going to use that." He had said something to me, after listening to our songs and going to see us. He's like, "You know, once you do something once, we heard it." I was like "Oh, it's an interesting thought."
Justin Courtney Pierre: He had no filter, so good.
Diane: To bring it back to The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, present day Motion City Soundtrack. Anything you'd like to add in particular about about this new record and what you guys have coming up on tour?
Justin Courtney Pierre: Just in terms of the record and the content of the record, having 10 years worth of living between the last record we did and this one, a lot of horrible stuff has happened and a lot of wonderful stuff has happened. Being able to have different things to write about, instead of variations on a theme. I spent a lot of time being confused. All of us, to some degree. We've had some wonderfully hard struggles to deal with, and there's been a lot of loss in people's lives as of late, too. And from what I hear, grief ebbs and flows over time, but there's still joy to be had.
