Motion City Soundtrack in New York City

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I was lucky enough to attend and photograph the second New York City date of Motion City Soundtrack’s farewell tour at Gramercy Theater. You can find the full-gallery, along with some brief thoughts, below.

I have written about Motion City Soundtrack’s importance to my life a number of times over the past few years. Most recently, on the eve of their farewell tour, I penned a letter to the band thanking them for that impact as well as summarizing their remarkable, if still somehow underrated career:

They were the band that understood you through your own neurosis, your doubt, your self-loathing and your worst days, and provided you with a soundtrack to get through it. I don’t believe that a lot of those characteristics ever completely go away, and that ongoing battle is why I’ll keep coming back to their music, long after their farewell tour is done.
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I still think a lot about how much Motion City Soundtrack has helped me with my struggles with self-confidence, my ability to heal from grief, and my weird neurosis, but mostly I try to think about how god damn happy their music makes me every time I listen to it.

It could be the most dark, ominous song in their discography, like “Last Night” or “Broken Heart” or “Hold Me Down,” and I could still find a faint glimmer of hope in there. Or it could be the songs that specifically tell me to seek out that hope, like “The Weakends” (“I’ll kick tomorrow, fight back at the pouring rain.”) or “Even if It Kills Me” (“For the first time in a long time, I can say / That I want to try and get better / And overcome each moment in my own way.”)


And that’s ultimately what I took away from their farewell tour in New York City. It was a goodbye, certainly, but it never felt maudlin or cloyingly emotional. Instead, it felt like celebration: a joyous look back at the years that were and an acknowledgment that life that will keep going.

The feeling was solidified before Motion City even took the stage, as SNL Cast Member Vanessa Bayer came out to introduce and do an impromptu, and hilarious in her own unique comedic style, roast of the band. “One day, maybe you’ll make the Motion City movie to go with the Motion City Soundtrack… I’m guessing it will have something to do with the fact that you guys have something to do with the Goonies.”


It was a fitting frame of reference for what would become a memorable night of music. As I noted in my last letter to the band, I’m not entirely convinced the farewell sticks forever. But if Motion City Soundtrack does decide go on a reunion tour someday, it’ll be because “Goonies never say die.”

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