Motion City Soundtrack / Jenny Owens Young / Free Energy
Filed under: Live Reviews by LiamNo Comments »
We are in Manchester. We are waiting for Motion City Soundtrack to take to the stage. Now as we all know before you get to the main movie you have to sit through the trailers. see the up and coming, get a sneak peaks at possible hits of the future. What you see and what you hear can range from completley awful to bloody brilliant. and on that note…
Step forward 28 year old singer-songwriter Jenny Owens Young all the way from New Jersey. Taking to the stage first tonight with a full band including Motion Members Matt and Josh, she gave the impression of a much harder rock sound, when in fact her live sound was very stripped down much like on her records.
For newcomers to Jenny this evening may have disappointed them finding that rock is not her natural sound. Equally, for people who knew Jenny’s music to see her on stage might have been a disappointment with the more edgy almost country sounding tones on show tonight.
One cannot doubt her singing voice which is immaculate and when combined with her quirkiness on stage there is a warming appeal. She may have been more engaging if she was on her own tonight, with the full band sound lost on the smaller academy crowd.
Rating: 
On next was Free Energy were the lead singer just came from painting the ceiling and the guitarist just came fresh from woodstock. What can i say about Free Energy? They made it easy to dislike them with their lazy rock that didnt suit the theme of the evening well.
They didnt mesh with the other bands on the bill (maybe supprting Jet would be more their thing). There 70′s laden rock didnt throw up many high points and some of guitarists Geoff Bucknams solos did a great job of going off on a pointless tangent.
Having only been together since 07 and boasting just one album to date you maybe can excuse free energys performance here. As I say perhaps a different crowd would have responded more lovingly but as it stood, my friends’s game of solitare did a better job of getting my attention than this Philadelphia 5 peice did.
Rating:
Now for the main event of the evening – Motion City Soundtrack. Starting off with old crowd favourites ‘The Fututre Freaks Me Out’ and ‘My Faviourite Acident’ taken from their debut album 2003′s “I Am the Movie”. Mass hysteria soon filled the academy, you could feel a wave of excitment and Motion do a pretty good of maintaining it during the course of their set.
With their back catalogue consisting of four studio albums, nine singles, seven extended plays (three split, one digital, one live) there was no shortage of material tonight. The music of old was subtley merged with new tracks from the bands latest release “My Dinosaur Life”.
Tonight was mostly focused on the music with little banter coming from stage other than to proclaim tonights show was “the best of the tour”. The crowd didnt seem to mind the lack of conversation though as they ate up every song that was thrown their way.
The downside would be this was a standard performance it wasn’t able to distinguish itself in any way. It did enough to make it an enjoyable performance and evening but there was no one “wow” moment I will take away from the night.
Still well worth seeing, Im not sure when they will be back on UK soil other than they are set to play the Leeds festival this year so if you go along to that make sure you catch these boys!
Rating: