The Motorcycle Industry

Hidden away in downtown Brooklyn is New York’s best-kept secret: The Motorcycle Industry...

“After seeing The Matches play when I was in the 8th grade, it made me realise I wanted to be in a band”. Meet John Langan, the band's 21 year old, San Franciscan, vocalist. Starting out by playing solo acoustic shows, Langan later combined musical forces with Mike Weiss, whom he had met at New York University, together laying the foundations of what was to become The Motorcycle Industry. With a background of Long Island hardcore bands and California local bands between them, the duo completed the band's lineup with the addition of bassist, Benjamin Caruba, and drummer, Phillip Boyer.

The band went on to self-produce 'Electric Education,' an LP filled with enough catchy guitar riffs, Saves The Day/Say Anything style vocals and witty/sarcastic lyrics to leave you wanting more.

The Motorcycle Industry may be associated with the new school emo/punk scene but a lot of the lyrics are very tongue in cheek, contributing to the bands appeal. Despite this, the band do have their serious moments varying from the likes of wanting to earn $10 an hour in order to buy colored vinyl and spending time talking on internet forums like Absolute Punk. “We’re serious about the music, but we have to have a sense of humor about it all. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves too” says Langan.

The Motorcycle Industry are the soundtrack of downtown New York with every song giving you the impression that you are walking down the streets of Brooklyn. Nowadays, it’s refreshing not to hear a generic band that sounds like everyone else. It’s only a matter of time until the Brooklyn four piece make it big.

For fans of: Say Anything and Saves The Day. - AlterThePress.com

V neck t shirt? Check. Flannel? Check. Cardigan? Check? Black-framed glasses? Check. Sports watch? Check-wait a second it better be a Thundercats watch...

"Fake friends will get you nowhere".

That part of the stanza in "Jesse" (not really a stanza, but let's just use that term to sound like a smart bitch) reminds me of that great part in Empire State Games' "Trivial Pursuit" where he goes, "why do you surrender your thoughts and emotions for limited surface acceptance".

You know how I love Oxford Collapse. These guys, so named The Motorcycle Industry, are like a less loud version of them. I think the one of the greatest things to describe a band is youthful, and not like your teen pop youthful, but much more brash, as if they're in the moment but not to be cute, but to say, "this is my hilarious self-awareness at this particular time and anything's game". It's a fun, snotty, awkward, punk-ish way of being when you're smarter than 16 but not settled down at 25. I love Brooklyn in this scrappy way as well. And that's where these guys call home.

MI's cuts basically are a lyrical adventure; there's a soft spot for me because I too went to the goddamn NYU bookstore as they lament on "Everything Sounds Better With". Singing with a drunk laziness (read: off key sometimes) but with a sly, abrasive, self-deprecating wit, John Langan sloshes through songs with a combination of vocal stylings from the Pogues, The Anniversary, Piebald, and a little bit of Say Anything. It's like a situation where you are drunk among friends making silly zingers and there's a sober acquaintance who just doesn't understand that some people actually get funnier the more drunk they get. I love the stream of consciousness in the stories spun, going from description to oh-SNAP judgements and back again without any rest. Because no matter, it's down to earth; calling other people out on their shit in very personal (and yet, almost objectively), specific instances is a great invitation to the listener to come into their world and see how they see in a fun way. The details are alluring in that way that they come so fast that you really are engaged to keep up with the thought process.

The music swings from Tosser's/Pixies type rumblings like "Blue Ribbon" to great little accents like the keyboard in "The Lost Weekend" breakdown, and the four piece seems to feel content and knows a thing or two about melody and mixing up between acoustic-heavy songs and adding doses of crunch here and there. Michael Weiss's mid-tempo guitar hooks and Ben Caruba's sometimes light, sometimes drudgy bass lay into the songs in a nice go-around-the-circle sort of way, like "here's my stuff, now it's his turn, and let's put it together now". Ryan Barnes rounds out the band with some Dave Grohl-in-Nirvana-Unplugged drumming; reasonable volume, rolling fills, a bit fluffy.

It's fist pumping with a clear conscience.

These guys are picking up some good shows as of late, including next Thursday, the 15th, at the Alphabet Lounge on Ave. C. Check out this flyer, with Ryan's chest hair prominently shown. Nice sunglasses indoors at night. Oh sophomore year NYU. - KingsCountyBop.blogspot.com

Facebook embodies the best and worst of technological advancement and convergence. The worst of it is when I'm bored and get lost clicking around, engaging tons of useless data. It's great! Sometimes you find someone that you have an unexplainable mutual friend with. And sometimes you randomly find the name of a band and you decide to look them up. I found The Motorcycle Industry somewhere and gave them a listen. Great, fun pop-rock(/punk?-who the fuck knows) band out of the Bay Area/now-NYC/NYU. Just released an album called Electric Education.

"Jesse From The Program" is a killer track. The lyrics are modestly awesome.
"Five dollars for a whiskey/Please don't ignore me when we get to class on Monday, okay thanks/Ten dollars more for the door fee/Dude, this band I'd ignore in a heartbeat/So could you find it in your soul to evaluate whether you want to be friends with me outside of a really super duper shitty social situation?/'Cause fake friends are better than nothing at all/And fake friends will get you nowhere/'Cause fake friends go better with drugs and alcohol/And fake friends are there after all." Probably not completely accurate as I just transcribed the lyrics but whatever. Remember all those friends you added before freshman year to cope with the overwhelming amount of people in your class you'd probably never meet? Fake friends. I still have one or two. I keep em around.

Or "Everything Sounds Better With Drums"
"Dude, I just want to make ten dollars an hour so I can go to Amoeba records and buy colored vinyl that I'll never play. Or vintage t-shirts. Maybe some novels that I'll get halfway through. Or imported DVDs with subtitles too. I'm hitting on the same girl at the NYU Bookstore, oh my god, not again."

Fuck. Yeah you know EXACTLY what I mean.

All the songs are great. I'm going to buy it soon.

Check out this band, they have some NYC dates coming up. - NickrKok.blogspot.com

I love this The Motorcycle Industry's album. There is no reason why I wouldn't listen to all the tracks a few hundred times more and write a review.

Lesson One
The opening of the first track gives a good look at what John Langan is thinking. Life can seem trivial, and sometimes that’s okay. His delivery is perfect; it is always dragging and never quite perfectly in key every time. That gives him the confidence to laugh at this misfortune rather than to be depressed by it. The last 30 seconds of the song may be the best part, as gang vocals join Langan who is cynically laughing.

Angela
The track has clearly careful verses, and a very memorable chorus. However, the pre-chorus may be one of the most catchy melodies I’ve heard in ages. The song is well built up; the lead guitar work is sparse and this allows for Langan’s voice and the drum and acoustic to really drive the song. The bouncing bass and acoustic at the front of the mix and Weiss’s lead guitar lick feels like what Against Me! might sound like if Mark Hoppus produced the record.

Sustained Silent Reading
At a minute forty-one seconds, this track boasts the shortest runtime on the record. Mostly reminiscent, Langan revels in the past over Motion City Soundtrack synthesizer melodies, and a pinch of the gang vocals. It’s a shame the song isn’t more fleshed out, as the backline sounds excellent throughout, and the melodic interlude reminds me of how much I liked 90s alternative rock. - VillageRecords.blogspot.com

I quite like this find. I've always enjoyed the sound of Say Anything's lead vocalist Max Bemis. The guy just sounds like he's always on the verge of a mental breakdown. Now mix Max Bemis-inspired vocals with a dash of acoustic folk-punk and you get The Motorcycle Industry. It's a wonderful combination that completely caught me off guard. When a debut full length delivers like this, I beg the question, who needs labels? - DownloadFreePunkAlbums.blogspot.com

The Motorcycle Industry's Electric Education is a goofily upbeat disc, full of acoustic-fronted full-band power-pop sing-alongs that somehow (musically) imagines older Say Anything repeatedly covering "Holland, 1945" in a meek fashion. Well...sort of. Then again, there's also a wacky, quasi-folk tilt to Electric Education that urges me to draw Fake Problems comparisons, but these dudes' opinion of that band, if any, likely borders on moderate appreciation.

In any event, Electric Education is a pretty quirky, fun album, if you don't mind that sort of bizarrely honest, non sequitur narration. Shit, the very first line of the very first song ("Lesson One") finds John Langan declaring "I've got an overdue library book in the trunk, / and your dad still thinks I'm gay." A bitter party-leaving diatribe comes in the form of "Jesse"; "Five dollars for a whiskey. / Please don't ignore me when we get to class on Monday. / Okay? Thanks." As you might guess, Langan's weird, nerdy and anxious though honest personality is definitely the driving factor throughout Education's 33-minute course.

What probably adds to the carefree and idiosyncratic nature of the whole thing is Langan's bubbly voice. Not that he necessarily sounds like Travis Shettel (Piebald), but think someone like that (maybe Bemis himself?) and you have a good handle on his delivery. When there's a little more restraint in things, it actually provides a good refresher -- see "We Can't All Be from Long Island" and "Split and Divide."

There's a pretty solid lockdown and focus on Electric Education, and while it could definitely be way more powerful, this isn't at all a bad start. - Punknews.org