I was really glad that within the first 30 seconds of listening to “Disappear”, you can easily tell it’s nothing like Motion City Soundtrack’s last album. Not that Even If It Kills Me was bad or anything, but it was a serious watering-down of the edgy pop-punk they had built so well on their previous two albums. While I Am the Movie is a fantastic, raw first album that is a solid play through from cover to cover, Commit This to Memory is a massive advancement on that style bringing more complex instrumentation and melodies into play. The biggest and practically only change between the new-age pop sensibilities of Even If It Kills Me from Commit this to Memory is the producers, and I’m pretty shocked at what a huge impact it had.

On Even If It Kills Me, the tracks were handed out to a few producers including a member of legendary synth-rock pioneers, The Cars and one the guys from Fountains of Wayne. (Remember “Stacy’s Mom?”) Now I would never blame a band for taking such a great opportunity, but it does lead me to believe that they had something to with the change between albums. The boys from Minnesota must not have been feelin’ this set up too much, because they’re back with blink-182 bassist/Commit This to Memory producer Mark Hoppus.

“Disappear” seems like a huge step in the right direction, back to the Motion City I know and love. The track has more of a punk influence than anything they’ve come out with since I Am the Movie. No clean guitars, a breakdown that’s fairly heavy and finally features the return of Justin Pierre putting a ton of effort into his vocals, singing so hard his voice slightly breaks in the chorus, something I wish I could say he’d done on Kills Me. While drummer Tony Thaxton usually has impressive and slightly unorthodox beats, nothing special is heard on this track and while it would’ve been nice to have, the quality doesn’t suffer any.

Really, the only thing missing is the beloved synth. I could possibly see it not fitting, and I assume that’s the reason it’s missing, but an MCS song really isn’t the same without it and at first, it worried me. But with this quote from Mark: “I think that ‘Memory’ is a really great record… For me, it encapsulates what Motion City Soundtrack is and can do. Now they want to make a record that’s along those lines but pushes it even further,” there’s no reason not to be excited.