Motion City Soundtrack + With Confidence + Admit One
Prince Bandroom, St Kilda
September 9th, 2016
By: Callum Doig
Sparking a career that’s lasted nineteen years, bringing indie, alternative and pop punk music together as one, Motion City Soundtrack announced that their career as a band had was to be put to rest. In order to complete their elongated journey, the Minneapolis quintet announced one last tour across the globe as a proper farewell to their longtime devoted following. With their final Australian shows set on the dawn of spring, Sydney locals With Confidence taking the role as the tour’s national support, alongside Melbourne’s very own Admit One opening up for the evening.
With Admit One’s set beginning just minutes after the doors had finally been opened, the Melbournian quintet executed a short, but sturdy five track setlist. While the vocal mix for frontman Dan Wood’s was slightly out of wack, the man kept his range and tone in check and in synch with the remainder of his band, whilst drummer Simon Graf took the lead in keeping his bandmates organised in rhythm. Despite Admit One having a tight performance in the spotlight, the patrons weren’t giving them as much of a response, even though they gave them plenty of cheers after each track.
However, With Confidence earned a greater reaction within their timeslot, with a handful of patrons jumping to the beats created by the four-piece. Just as the previous act faced, the vocal mix for With Confidence was not perfect. Nonetheless, With Confidence delivered a promising result of their onstage routine for forty minutes, with a nice reception from the crowd. Guitarist Luke Rockets also told his story of how he first heard Motion City Soundtrack, and how he got a tattoo of the dinosaur from the album cover of My Dinosaur Life.
As Motion City Soundtrack arrived onto the stage, giving their cluster of Melbournian residents an emotional sendoff, there was as much liveliness in that ninety minute set as any other previous Motion City gig that had taken place in the Australian music capital. This time, Motion City had themselves a clean sound mix, compared to the supports, which gave their gathering of devotees what they wanted in order to enjoy their goodbye gig for Minneapolis’ alternative stars.
With a catalogue of six full lengths, Motion City Soundtrack used up a majority of their timeslot performing songs from Commit This to Memory, while giving their audience an equal balance of favourites such as This Is For Real, My Favorite Accident, A Lifeless Ordinary and True Romance. No matter what Motion City Soundtrack decided to play, there was nothing but pure energy and animation from the fans jumping and pouring their hearts into every lyric that they sang along with Justin Pierre.
As Motion City Soundtrack executed a three-part of their encore, the quintet gave a massive thank you to those in the Prince Bandroom for attending their final Melbourne show, giving them Anything At All, Even If It Kills Me and The Future Freaks Me Out as the grand finale. With Motion City Soundtrack now said and done, one should never look at this farewell tour as a sad ending. It should be recognised as a celebration and a remembrance for a band’s extensive and breathtaking career for what they gave to audiences worldwide. Especially seeing as Motion City Soundtrack’s legacy has brought an array of different people from distinctive scenes together as one immense family.
