every story needs an ending, after all
May 9, 2008

Motion City Soundtrack recently released their Acoustic EP exclusively on iTunes. Featuring five acoustic versions of songs from their LP Even If It Kills Me, it showcases the band’s songwriting abilities and gives a new gloss to the included tunes.
Utilizing acoustic guitar and piano in place of the buzzing electricity of the band’s usual high-voltage formation, MCS augments the sound with strings, bells, and handclaps.
Singles “It Had To Be You” and “Broken Heart” maintain the basic feeling and momentum of the album versions when stripped down. “Can’t Finish What You Started” sounds even better in its acoustic form than the original version. The piano at the end of “Point of Extinction” gives it a heart-tugging depth that compliments the song’s original incarnation well.
The standout on the EP by far is opener “Fell In Love Without You”. On Even If It Kills Me the song is a frenetic kiss-off, but here it’s a subdued reflection. The song includes the line “only time will tell if violins will swell in memory of what we used to call ‘in love’” and is cleverly accompanied by violins starting at the second iteration of the chorus, hinting that maybe the narrator and his subject did have something after all.
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Acoustic EP dropped on 05/06/08.
Get more info on Motion City Soundtrack at their official website.
Though things got off to a late start, the May 2, 2008 show featuring Rooney, Locksley, and The Bridges at Madison’s The Annex was worth the wait.

You’ve all heard him. At more of the shows you’ve gone to than not, there’s that guy. The one who insists on yelling “Freebird!”, regardless of appropriateness of the request. In the first section of his book, The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling, author Mitch Myers personifies this shady character into the fictional Adam Coil.
Residing on an isthmus, the people of Madison, WI can’t help but love a good sea chantey. Lucky for them, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists brought his hyper-literate musical tales to the Barrymore Theatre on April 23, 2008.
When I picked up Last Night A DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey, I expected it to be a history of popular music on the radio. After all, when one encounters the term “disc jockey” the mind generally doesn’t jump to an image of a man behind a set of turntables, pulsing lights and thudding bass abound - but this is in fact the type of DJ authors Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton are referencing in their 1999 release.
The 
