Blast From The Past: Commit This To Memory (Motion City Soundtrack)

It's 2005, you are 14 years old, you have no date, all your friends are on their summer holidays and you aren't old enough to go the bar, what do you do? Well if you were anything like me you would sit in your room (or front room) and listen to your Walkman through some awful headphones or portable speakers and play ps2, and this album is nothing more than nostalgia. It's no lie that I love this band to pieces (to an extent, before they released their more rocky awful output, see also: Brand new, Hawthorne Heights) and this album is easily one of my favourite albums of all time.

From the opening track "Attractive Today" to the single that everyone remembers them for, because it had a totally rude title "Let's Get Fucked Up and Die" all the way through to Mark Hoppus duet "Hangman" this album is mired with both intelligent synths (way before Four Year Strong mastered it) beautiful un-optimistic lyrics and some of the most interesting alt-rock/emo guitar work I’ve ever heard.

Granted this album could be perceived by some as dated, a bit whingey lyric wise with some semi-duff lines and it feels a tad angsty and sadly they are the kind of band that attracts that awful trend of putting anime characters with the lyrics to the songs under it, and the song "Resolution" does feel a bit drawn out.

However regardless of these minor faults, I can't really dwell on them for the reason that this is a really good album and definetly shows a more versatile side to the kind of emo/rock genre.I suppose that's the point of these blast from the past things, is that even if you don't like that band I am talking about or have any memories associated to them, I want you to see my misty eye nostalgic love for bands from your youth

xoxox owen
"hangman it's not your fault, commit this to memory, for bright ideas that get lost along the way"