Motion City Soundtrack ring in the new year at the Uptown Theater

Motion City Soundtrack - I Am The Movie 20th Anniversary with special guests: Gully Boys at Uptown Theater on Sunday, December 31.Sara Fish for MPR

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January 02, 2024

Back in the mid-2000s, it just didn’t feel like the holiday season in the Twin Cities unless Motion City Soundtrack was playing their annual First Avenue Christmas bash. Even as the synthy pop punkers rocketed to mainstream success, they made sure to spread plenty of hometown holiday cheer by giving each show memorable names. “The Night Motion City Soundtrack Stole Christmas II: Santa's Revenge!” from 2006 is just one of many that come to mind.

While those annual events ended in 2010, Sunday’s New Year’s Eve show at the Uptown Theater felt like a revival. But this wasn’t a one-off gig. The show was the second stop on the band’s U.S. tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album, I Am the Movie.

Motion City Soundtrack have always been proud of their Twin Cities roots, often throwing up-and-coming local bands on their shows. Sunday’s show was no exception. Minneapolis-based Toilet Rats were the night’s first opener, playing a short and sweet set of fast synth-punk.

Toilet Rats is led by guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter Tommy Rehbein. According to an interview with him last year, “Toilet Rats is what it might sound like if your gothy/punky older sister made you a mixtape in 1987.” With punchy, dancey songs about haunted houses, vampires, and standing up to bullies, that description is spot-on.

Rehbein has spent plenty of time on the road with Motion City Soundtrack as a member of the indie rock outfit Small Towns Burn a Little Slower, and also played in Farewell Continental with MCS frontman Justin Pierre. During their respective sets, both Rehbein and Pierre fondly noted that Farewell Continental played the Uptown Theater, when it was still a movie theater, before a screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Toilet Rats’ six-piece, three-guitar attack had all the makings for a massive wall of sound. And they probably would’ve had it were it not for some issues with the overall mix. (Throughout their set — and also, unfortunately, during Gully Boys — the vocals were really high in the mix, while all the music was far too low. A bummer, but not the band’s fault.) Still, Toilet Rats were lively, entertaining, and a great way to kick off the evening. Plus, they pulled out a cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” that had the crowd bopping along.

Gully Boys on stage — Gully Boys. Motion City Soundtrack - I Am The Movie 20th Anniversary with special guests: Gully Boys at Uptown Theater on Sunday, December 31.
Sara Fish for MPR

Joining Motion City Soundtrack for the I Am the Movie anniversary tour are local grunge pop heavyweights Gully Boys. The band’s 2018 debut album, Not So Brave, garnered a ton of well-deserved praise and led to Gully Boys sharing stages all across the country with the Hold Steady, Third Eye Blind, Mannequin Pussy, and many more. Their follow-up EP, Phony, was released in late 2019, just before live music ground to a halt. But in the past couple of years, Gully Boys have been hard at work releasing the Favorite Son EP in 2021 and a couple of other singles here and there.

It’s no surprise that Gully Boys are as popular as they are. Their songs have the perfect mix of raw emotion, thoughtful and clever lyrics, and catchy hooks. But live, drummer Nadirah McGill, singer/guitarist Kathy Callahan, bassist Natalie Klemond, and guitarist Mariah Timm are a force to be reckoned with. McGill is an absolute powerhouse behind the drums and provides much of the band’s relatable banter. Callahan’s voice expertly balances beauty with ferocity, setting the band apart from many of their peers in the genre. Klemond and Timm each throw tons of their own energy into the mix without ever missing a beat.

As noted above, sound issues for Gully Boys’ set, albeit slightly less apparent, sometimes made it difficult to hear McGill’s drums. Gully Boys’ newer songs utilize occasional electronic drums, which seemed higher in the mix than their analog kit.

Motion City Soundtrack on stage — Motion City Soundtrack - I Am The Movie 20th Anniversary with special guests: Gully Boys at Uptown Theater on Sunday, December 31.
Sara Fish for MPR

I was curious how Motion City Soundtrack’s set would sound, but thankfully, I didn’t have to wonder for long. At exactly 11 p.m., Pierre, drummer Tony Thaxton, guitarist Josh Cain, bassist Matthew Taylor, and synth player Jesse Johnson all walked onstage with friendly waves. Joining them was a mystery guitarist, later identified as Zack Comtois. Pierre held his phone out to livestream the entrance for his wife, who was at home with their sick child.

As everyone took their places, Pierre approached the microphone sans guitar. As he explained a couple of songs into their set, he’s spent the last year recovering from a severe back injury and isn’t able to play guitar again quite yet — hence Comtois’ presence.

“Everyone give it up for Zack. He’s going to be my hands tonight!”

Pierre as a standalone frontman works exceptionally well. While he’s always entertaining, it was nice not to see him so tethered to the mic stand. He moved around a ton, way more than at most Motion City shows, and seemed way more comfortable with just a mic in his hand rather than a guitar. As he hopped around the stage, his signature messy hair bounced around with him.

By now, album anniversary shows, and nostalgia shows in general, are a dime a dozen and tend to fall into one of two extremes. They either lack the energy the band originally had, or they’re executed so well that they fully transport fans back to a specific time and place. For Motion City Soundtrack, there’s no question that it will always be the latter.

Anyone who has seen them live over the years knows their shows are brimming with non-stop energy, silly banter, and catchy synth-driven hooks. Sunday’s show delivered on all those fronts. The band has aged gracefully without losing their ability to put on a wildly entertaining show. Sure, you probably won’t see Johnson doing handstands on his synth very much these days, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still find ways to use his Moog as a willing dance partner.

The I Am the Movie set went off without a hitch, and thankfully, all sound issues from earlier in the show seemed to be resolved. Then again, the vocals being too high in the mix wouldn’t have been a factor anyway, as the crowd often outsang Pierre, particularly during songs like “The Future Freaks Me Out,” “My Favorite Accident,” and “Cambridge.” As they played through the album, two big video screens flanking Thaxton showed music videos and live footage of the band’s younger selves, adding to the night’s nostalgia.

The album set wrapped up at around 11:55, and Cain reassured the crowd that they’d return shortly to ring in the new year. A few moments before midnight, he delivered on his promise and returned to the stage with Pierre and Comtois to countdown with everyone. Right at the stroke of midnight, blasts of confetti showered down on the crowd as “Auld Lang Syne” rang out over the house speakers. The trio fittingly followed that up with a moving rendition of Commit This to Memory’s “Together We’ll Ring In the New Year” before the rest of the band joined them back onstage.

Motion City made sure that their entire catalog was represented in the encore, beginning with the I Am the Movie bonus track “1000 Paper Cranes.” For Panic Stations’ “It’s a Pleasure to Meet You,” Thaxton welcomed Claudio Rivera to take his rightful place behind the drums as he played with the band for a few years after Thaxton left in 2013.

The rest of the encore included My Dinosaur Life’s “Disappear,” Even If it Kills Me’s “This Is For Real,” and Go’s “Alcohol Eyes.” But only one song can properly close out a Motion City Soundtrack show on New Year’s Eve, especially considering how awful this past year was for so many people. As Thaxton kicked off one of the most recognizable drum beats of the mid-2000s, Pierre did his part to reassure the crowd that “Everything Is Alright.”

Motion City Soundrack