SPIN

To close out a banner year in which their major label debut, My Dinosaur Life, opened at a career-high No. 15 on the Billboard charts, Minneapolis rock vets Motion City Soundtrack threw a hometown blowout concert, inviting their favorite artists to join the party.

Last weekend, the band hosted and performed at the first-ever Popsickle Festival -- curated by frontman Justin Pierre. "I basically paid a bunch of money to see all of my favorite bands live," he tells SPIN.com.

Among his picks to play at the city's long-standing nightspot First Avenue: established acts like Minus the Bear and Foxy Shazam, as well as up-and-coming bands like Chicago's Gold Motel and Minneapolis acts like Take Cover, Gospel Gossip, and Now, Now (formerly Now, Now Every Children).

Here, see SPIN contributor Joe Lemke's exclusive photos from MCS' Popsickle Fest, along with Pierre's reflections on the bands he loves.

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"The show recreated what I remember of my early-Lollapalooza experiences -- that back and forth between stages, seeing all sorts of bands," Pierre (above, right) says of Popsickle Fest, which featured two stages and back-to-back set times. Here, Motion City Soundtrack, the show's headliner, rock out.

Pierre (right) poses backstage with Foxy Shazam guitarist Loren Daniel Turner (left) and bassist Sky White (middle).

Having the shows at First Avenue was special for Pierre, too. "It's where I went to see all of my favorite bands growing up -- Smashing Pumpkins, Flaming Lips, Superchunk, Jawbox," he says. "It's where MCS always ended our year with a holiday show. It's home!"

"We had a show with Foxy Shazam earlier this year in London and at the time I had never heard of them," Pierre says of the Cincinnati rockers. "They started playing and their energy was beyond anything I had ever seen. It was like Queen and the singer [Eric Sean Nally] has such an awesome voice. Everything about them is ridiculous, reverent, and awesome. They don't give a fuck. They just want to rock -- and they do."

Pierre says Minneapolis' Party House, formed by his close friend producer/instrumentalist Tommy Rehbein (who briefly played Moog in MCS) and singer/songwriter Gwen Ruehle, is "reminiscent of Mazzy Star, Jesus and Mary Chain, and maybe a little New Order."

"Gwen writes the songs on acoustic guitar and Tommy doctors them up," Pierre says. "It's slow, depressing and washy music with really simple drums. It's very interesting and not too derivative."

While Pierre had never heard any music by Gold Motel prior to their Popsickle set, he knew from their track records that it must be good: "The band has Greta [Salpeter, above center] of the Hush Sound and former members of This Is Me Smiling; I've known them for a while. And as soon as Greta opened her mouth it was like -- BAM! She was like Etta James. I was just blown away. They're all extremely talented musicians."

The Seattle math-rock vets are longtime favorites of Pierre. Why? "It's simple," says Pierre. "They're the best band on any bill." Pictured: Frontman Jake Snider.

"My friend told me about these girls, so I went to one of their shows in Minneapolis," explains Pierre. "It was absolutely haunting. It made my skin ache in the most beautiful way. It's simple -- it's two girls playing different instruments and singing. But they much a such a big noise!" Pictured: The Chord and the Fawn's Angela Krube.

"They're one of my favorites," Pierre says of the Minneapolis trio. "They're like a shoegaze version of the Replacements. It's amazing. When she [frontwoman Sarah Nienaber] sings, it's painful in a great way. She has the soul of Greg Dulli and the frustration of Paul Westerberg. There's so much inside and it can't get out fast enough."

The band, formerly known as Now, Now Every Children, immediately struck Pierre with their hook-laden indie rock sound. "Someone told me about their record, so I looked it up online. I heard one song and immediately bought it on iTunes," he says. "They fucking rock. Their live set reminded me of watching a band like the Breeders -- three chicks rocking out!"

With his side-project, Pierre has a different set of musical goals: "We wanted to the exact opposite of what a band would want to do to get successful," he jokes. This includes wearing masks onstage, listing their hometown as Tokyo on MySpace, and adopting stage names. Justin's? Richard Kimble, the name of the main character in the 1993 movie The Fugitive. That era is a theme. "We have an affinity for all things early-'90s," he says. "We wanted to start a band influenced by Flaming Lips, Guided by Voices, Pavement. We want to embrace the imperfections, the mistake, the '90s sound."

The Minneapolis quintet are close friends of MCS, says Pierre, and have had quite a musical impact on him. "In the pop-punk genre, everything sounds the same and many of the singers bug the crap out of me," he explains. "But they're one of the best in the genre. Their sound is really catchy. Immediately it was energy and postivity."

Pierre says that MCS are planning Popsickle Fest again in 2011, but first there's something a bit more pressing: a new album. "We've started writing for the next album," he says. "We'll do some demoing for a week in January. There should be a new album in 2011. We're hoping to do one album per year. Let's keep 'em coming!" Indeed.