MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK – My Dinosaur Life

Pop-punk, especially the girly-man Warped Tour brand, has been notoriously maligned by upper-tier pop analysts ever since the immediate, synapse-busting pleasures of Blink-182 wore off. Of course, the kids still love them, attracting a fairly panoramic demographic of mosh-warrior metalheads and honor roll cheerleaders alike.

Motion City Soundtrack, contiguously the thinking man’s power-punk collective, are the closest thing the scene has produced the dreggy-haired indie faction can muster ovation for. Pumped full of elastic hooks, crunchy guitar four-steps, and genuinely catchy highlights, their latest, My Dinosaur Life, is (despite the outwardly annoying title) an undeniably solid packaging of the acceptable parts of pop-punk — borrowing more from hipster relics the dB’s and Big Star than the much more dubious sources of Yellowcard and Good Charlotte. Many will try, but you simply cannot deny a record that achieves its goals (exceptionally catchy, radio-ready pop music about love, rejection, and Xbox) with such polish. If you simply allow it to be good, it won’t disappoint.

(Columbia Records, 550 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10022)