Motion City Soundtrack / Schatzi - Split EP

As I stated when I reviewed the Cursive / Easter Youth split, to me the purpose of a good split EP is to introduce fans of one band to the songs of another band. The Motion City Soundtrack / Schatzi split did just that for me, and created yet another successful pairing. While more people are probably familiar with Motion City Soundtrack, I was actually familiar with Schatzi from a previous promotion we did. I own their last album, although I can’t say I pull it out all that often, and have passively enjoyed their music for a while now. However, MCS was completely new to me despite hearing their name thrown around quite a bit. From the opening track, “Throw Down” I was impressed with MCS and their poppy rock sound that kind of borders on pop/punk/rock or whatever the hell you call that kind of music these days. Basically: catchy choruses that can get kind of repetitive at times, nice happy vocals about super heroes and girls, and some sweet guitar licks including dueling guitars in the track “Capital H”. Combine that with some piano in the track “Back to the Beat”, lots of moog in the mix, and some nice vocal melodies and you have a pretty good bunch of songs. Then you move on to the Schatzi tracks. In a lot of ways, it makes perfect since that the MCS tracks came first; they almost act as a sort of intro to the Schatzi songs which have an edgier, more “indie rock” feel to them. Sadly, there are only two new tracks here and the first is under 3 minutes, so you feel somewhat cheated on the Schatzi side of the album. However the tracks that are here are true gems and are a big improvement from the band’s previous album. The album closes out with a cover of Journey’s “Any Way You Want” it, that manages to keep you smiling at the intentional silliness of the song, while at the same time rocking out and being impressed with how well Schatzi pulled it off. What I have in my hands is yet another successful split EP that will cause me to look into some albums from Motion City Soundtrack and has gotten me excited about new Schatzi material. If you are fan of either band, I think you will be pleased with this split. [www.redemption.net]