Excellence in motion

Upon listening to Motion City Soundtrack’s third and latest full-length album, it’s clear “Even If It Kills Me” is a producer’s record.

Instrumentally, the songs seem to have nothing in common.

If it weren’t for the signature allure and expectedly introspective lyrics of singer Justin Pierre, you could pin each song on a different band.

“Even If It Kills Me” is a scattershot of potential radio hits with rotating captains in the producer’s seat: The Cars’ Rick Ocasek, Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and Girls Against Boys’ Eli Janney.

Schlesinger and Janney tracked songs in the same session.

The result is an album that is willing to try anything except anything consistent.

While “Last Night” reaches into Death Cab For Cutie’s bag of tricks, “Calling All Cops” is but one in a series of infectious anthems that have Weezer written all over them.

This new studio set on Epitaph Records is as crafty as it is derivative, though, with redeeming moments such as the orchestral punk movement “Hello Helicopter,” and the percussive build-ups and fake-outs cut with lush vocal harmonies on “It Had To Be You.”

Ultimately, there’s substantial growth in the experimentation to help overcome what the recording lacks in originality. That’s more evident in the newly released acoustic EP – available exclusively on iTunes – which peels away the studio gloss and recasts five songs from the LP with piano, acoustic guitar and strings.

In this way, Motion City Soundtrack’s intuitively on-point pop proves it doesn’t need to be perfect. Just precise.

Without doing it all, the acoustic EP does more.

Request some unplugged stuff when Motion City Soundtrack comes through Thursday at 7 p.m. to The Knitting Factory Concert House, 919 W. Sprague Ave., with Spill Canvas and Sing It Loud. Tickets are $20, through TicketsWest (509-325-SEAT, 800-325-SEAT, www.ticketswest.com).

Get down London

Things just clicked for Spokane’s London Get Down.

The songwriting process flows like water. The recordings go just as smoothly.

After hammering out the first four songs in the band’s live set, they recorded with local studio whiz Lee Stoker. Then, after writing another bunch of songs, they decided to build with respected sound engineer Bill Nieman. They were so satisfied with both batches of demos that they decided to release them on an album.

“It sounded good. We went in there and laid down what we do and we were like, ‘Screw it, let’s put it out,’ ” singer Jimmy Arguello said. “It’s an album of high-end demos.”

The album, “Some Songs We Made,” contains 10 radio-ready tunes stretched across 15 tracks with some “hidden gibberish” mixed throughout, a quasi-concept of robots in the future.

London Get Down’s CD release show happens Saturday at 9 p.m. at The Zombie Room, 230 W. Riverside Ave., with support from local diehards Monolith and Seattle’s Windowpain. Cover is $6.