The Motion Sick: The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait

Back in 1982, a decision was made as to the storage capacity of the humble compact disc. Designed to be an hour long initially, it was later upped to 74 minutes so a complete performance of Beethoven's ninth could fit on it.

The point being, that music dictates how long it needs to be, not convention or technology. That being the case, why are The Motion Sick so afraid of releasing a shorter than average album? Clocking in at around 27 minutes of original music is not a feat to be sneered at, and yet for some reason, they saw fit to bump it up to the 35 minute mark.

The album closes with a rather lacklustre cover version of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Perhaps it's gone down as a live favourite of theirs to play, but here it sweats pointlessness and the second filler track, a remix of "30 Lives", despite being admittedly good, breaks the hold of "The Truth...." by deviating so much stylistically, plus there's no avoiding the fact that essentially the same song is on the album twice.

Now that that's out of the way, to the actual new music. Without a doubt, The Motion Sick could be described as 'exceptional'. Falling squarely in the indie-rock catagory they easily fulfil the main requirements of their audience. Melody, check. Emotion, check. Witty lyricism, double check. Opener, "Jean Paul" eases in with a solid showing, and has an oddly comical moment or two when vocalist Michael Epstein tries to fit just a couple more syllables into his delivery than is strictly advisable.

Likely to be making a lot of musicians "Songs we wish we'd written" list in a few years time is "30 lives", simultaneously displaying aching emotional impact set against a jaunty jig of a tune it shows why a collision between the tour buses of Manchester Orchestra and LCD Soundsystem could be construed as a good thing, y'know, if not for the whole 'untimely death' thing. A gold star is also awarded for the inspired use of the Konami Code in the backing vocals.

"I can walk on water, like I'm one of the chosen. I can walk on water, as long as it's frozen." is a line of theirs that sums up the entirety of the album (save the last two tracks) The Motion Sick are capable of extraordinary feats given that they approach things with logic, humour and a bucketload of heart. As a metaphor, that last one could be the band's mantra, or taken literally, incredibly gross.