Motion City Soundtrack talked with The Alternative about their hiatus and other topics:

“I’ve said this before; Josh and Matt and I, we’ve sent ideas back and forth intermittently since 2006,” Pierre says. “There is music to be made; I feel that. There are songs that I’m like, Fuck, this could be amazing, I’ve got this ditty that’s perfect. For me, I’ve found I’m much more concept-driven; I can’t write something unless I’ve got this big ridiculous plan. We do have a lot of songs and I think we could put this thing together if we could all get on the same page. But with the pandemic….”

Around the time My Dinosaur Life came out, the band members were writing parts on their own and sending them to each other, and they quickly came to realize how different that is from all being in the same room to hammer things out. It’s why they’re hesitant to try and make new music remotely during this continued lockdown period. “That emotion that happens in the room in those moments is what MCS is,” Cain says. “We could probably make something really cool as a mail-in record, but I worry about it having the substance we need to have.”

Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack talked with BrooklynVegan about the possibility of more new music from the band:

I don’t know. A few of us have been sending ideas back and forth since 2016, but no real movement has been had on that. We live in 4 different states and 3 of us have kids. I think we all have different jobs too, so… undecided. But I still think there is more music to be made with these fools.

Stephenie Meyers, yes, the author of the Twilight novels, reveals on her blog:

There was this one song by one of my favorite bands—it was such an amazing encapsulation of Edward’s mindset throughout Twilight, the despair and the hope and the despair again. The joy of first love plus the sure knowledge of impending tragedy. Perhaps because it was such a specifically Edwardian song, it never found a place in a Bella-centric movie. So it just sat there, being perfect for a story that was only in my head. The band never released the song. It only existed on an old submissions CD and my personal Midnight Sun playlist. 

I’ve been listening to this song for a decade, all by myself.

When I realized that Midnight Sun was actually going to happen, that I was going to be able to finish it, my mind quickly turned to the playlist. There was pruning to be done, adding, subtracting, searching for songs that captured what I needed… but then this big problem. It wouldn’t be the Midnight Sun playlist without THE song. Which didn’t officially exist.

Skip to the happy ending: with an assist from Alex the Amazing, I was able to get in touch with the band and to my great joy, they were willing to help out. So here is THE song. I hope you love it as much as I do, though I’m not sure that’s possible. From the very excellent band Motion City Soundtrack, I give you Crooked Ways.