Friday night marked Motion City Soundtrack’s first appearance at Summerfest in a decade, and the band made the absolute most of the occasion. 

Early on in the night, frontman Justin Pierre noted that they were “going to play as many songs for you as we can,” with their hour-long headlining slot, and they made good on that promise, packing as much material as possible into a 9:30 show on the Generac Power Stage. However, it wasn’t just as many songs as possible, but largely crowd favorites from the band’s first four albums. Aside from new single “She Is Afraid” from their upcoming album “The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World,” the band only focused on material up to 2010’s “My Dinosaur Life,” and it proved to be most effective for them.

In all honesty, each of those four albums are filled with Motion City Soundtrack’s biggest hits, as well as some of their most memorable album cuts. Just about every song had the Generac stage crowd singing along at full voice, with a big crowd on what felt like the festival’s busiest night so far in terms of attendance. 

In the brief moments that the band did address the crowd, Pierre was charming and delightfully awkward, with quips about the set and briefly about what the band had been up to. He would also not pick up a guitar for the whole show, instead yielding that responsibility to touring guitarist Jacob Carlson. That left Pierre plenty of opportunity to dance awkardly with pseudo-robot moves to the band's songs, while maybe still figuring out just what to do in the instrumental breaks between verses.

“I like that song” he noted, just after finishing “A Lifeless Ordinary (Need A Little Help).” Guitarist Josh Cain chimed in, “How do you feel about the next one?” to which Pierre replied “...I’m for it.” with a very forthright stare at the crowd. That was largely the extent of his on-stage banter, instead focused on jumping from one song to the next without losing the crowd’s attention. He did, however, take time to point out that he had been wearing a Nebraska Cornhuskers winter hat in the summer heat, before pulling it off and admitting that he “knows nothing about sportsball,” and that he just liked the word Cornhuskers. It felt very on-brand for Motion City’s playful awkwardness, even if Pierre didn’t know he was in the home state of a different Big Ten team.

X

While the band doesn’t have an official greatest hits compilation out, the rest of the set played out like one, with a bevy of singles to close out the main portion of the set. “L.G. FUAD” from 2005’s “Commit This To Memory” will forever be in the band’s setlist, with the Generac Power Stage crowd singing along while commiserating about the state of the world. Things slowed down just a bit with “Last Night” from 2008’s “Even If It Kills Me,” before the main set closed on “Commit This To Memory” album-closer “Hold Me Down.” Then, just a bit of awkwardness, as the band walked offstage for a break before the encore. Pierre, however, didn’t seem to know that everyone else was walking off, so he threw up his hands and smiled while walking to the back. With some of their biggest songs left to play, everyone knew an encore was coming.

“Welcome to the second half of the show!” he exclaimed when returning to the microphone. The band certainly could have played a second set, given that the night was still young by Summerfest standards. However, they opted for their biggest hits, “Everything Is Alright” and “The Future Freaks Me Out” for two more singalongs before walking off, for real this time. 

Much like emo compatriots Mayday Parade did the night before, Motion City Soundtrack knew just how to command a festival crowd. Over 75 minutes, they gave Summerfest the audio equivalent of a cereal with all marshmallows and no grain, just playing what would elicit the biggest reactions in their set. They could do that, though, knowing that a new album is on the way this September, and they will most likely be back to the Milwaukee area with that album in tow.