MXPX, Motion City Soundtrack,Unpaid Debt @ The UNSWRoundhouse, 01/09/2005

Tue 6th Sep, 2005 in Gig Reviews

Any fan of punk pop with a side of rock should check out MXPX next time they are in town. A fun night of great bands with Motion City Soundtrack standing out as the highlight.

Unpaid Debt are a young, energetic, exciting new band that tore the stage apart from the first notes. The crowd responded to them and the circle pits started straight away. The best songs of the set were Saved By Dynamite and I Know. Full of attitude, a strong sound and definitely an exciting band to watch.

Motion City Soundtrack was up next and they were so much fun. With a great mix of songs from the new album and the early tunes, the crowd karaoke started in earnest, particularly with Capital H, probably the biggest hit with the crowd. The crowd surged and pulsed throughout the whole set. They did Attractive Today, Feel The Pain, Make Out Kids and The Future Freaks Me Out off the new album Panic which sounded amazing. The album shows a strengthening in the song writing and really highlights the positive effect of spending so much time on the road together. The road testing of their existing songs and working out the elements that get a great crowd reaction and incorporating those things into their new material.

Motion City Soundtrack had an enormous amount of energy, filling the entire stage with pure punk rock noise. I have got to profess my delight when the singer, with a real guitar slung around his neck, still chose to play the air drums in places! As a bit of a closet air drummer myself I was delighted to see someone out and proud! The keyboardist was also one of those delightful over-exuberant musicians who jumped and crouched, shook and shimmied all over the teeniest keyboard I’ve ever seen. Add to this his uncanny resemblance to a young Kevin Bacon, the dance moves and the perkiness and he was a fun visual element to the band.

Motion City Soundtrack did Perfect Teeth and Capital H off an earlier album and ended the set strongly with Everything is Alright, an anthem if I ever heard one. They left the stage to a roar of applause, leaving behind a buzz of anticipation for the main event.

MXPX are all tattooed, sleeveless, styled punk-pop and very slick. As a trio, they fill the stage running and jumping, kicking and punching screaming the whole while. They have a huge pool of songs to swim in and they moved through them so quickly and seamlessly that we were into the third song Responsibility before I had time to breathe and I was certainly not alone. By this point the drums had fallen apart and needed to be reassembled by the drum tech and the singer had karate-kicked his mic stand, knocking it over, retrieving it before knocking it over again. It was not so much smooth as funny! With his hair coloured just so, his sleeveless shirt showing his muscled arms, to see him go off like a Klutz bomb won me over completely.

They performed Darkness, Its Alright and Heard That Sound in the first half of the show and interspersed the songs with a rather odd banter with the crowd. The singer Mike Herrera was addressing the audience but only did so while looking at the guitarist Tom Wisniewski and it seemed to fall flat, even the mandatory “Love Sydney, move here, best crowd…” banter got minimal reaction. The strangest banter was perhaps the statement that the singer Mike liked the sweaty ladies in the pit and was offering to lick their armpits and perhaps that is how Mike got the cold he was struggling with. Normally gross bodily function humour of any kind is a crowd pleaser but this was just icky!

Many of the songs they performed featured a heavy emphasis on crowd response, for the audience to sing a response to Mike’s request. Perhaps this was why there was so much build up between songs to ensure that the crowd really gave back when they were asked and it seemed to work during the songs. The shouting around me during Chick Magnet and Punk Rawk Show was so loud you couldn’t hear the band! Tomorrow’s Another Day and Young and Depressed were strong songs that saw the band really show their strength as musicians and showmanship with some nifty guitar tossing thrown in for good measure. Play It Loud led into the encore which featured Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash and Punk Rawk Show.

MXPX are often described in the music press as “Christian-themed pop-punk”. Maybe the Christian movement is going undercover but the tattooed, smooth-talking lothario that is lead singer Mike did not seem to be a typical picture-perfect parishioner pin-up you would expect from a Christian themed trio. I would banish that religious preconception from your mind and go and see MXPX if you get the chance.