rock bands Superchunk, Jawbox, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Flaming Lips, Fugazi, and Pavement. Additional artists that inspired the band includes Braid and The Rentals, Elvis Costello, Pixies, Tom Waits, Ben Folds, the Weakerthans, Poster Children, the Carpenters, and the Cardigans. AllMusic additionally credits bands such as Weezer and the Get Up Kids as influences, among others. Pierre quoted Waits that "all anybody ever does is imitate their favorite artist—badly," adding, "we're just regurgitating all the crap we listened to in the late '80s and early '90s, the music that got us into playing music in the first place." The band's musical style is widely recognizable by its unique blend of pop punk with the Moog synthesizer. The usage of the Moog stems from Cain, who first heard the instrument employed on the Rentals' album Return of the Rentals (1995). He subsequently bought a cheap Moog at a pawn shop and wanted it to be an integral part of Motion City upon their formation. Johnson became known for his signature "Moogstand" in live performances, which consisted of a handstand on the instrument. The group has been widely attributed to a number of different genres, including pop rock, power pop, indie rock, emo, and pop punk. Joshua Cain dismissed this latter label, remarking, "I definitely wouldn't consider us a pop-punk band. Our influences are more based on '90s bands like Superchunk and early Weezer." Pierre characterized the band's music as "dirty, fast, happy, emotional rock songs." Nylon compared the music of their debut album, I Am the Movie, to All and the Get Up Kids. It has been described as having a "distinctly unified and identifiable style." Subsequent releases varied in style. My Dinosaur Life, for example, saw the band attempting to emulate their favorite post-hardcore acts, such as Archers of Loaf and Dinosaur Jr. Lyrics Most of Motion City Soundtrack's lyrical content was written by lead vocalist, Justin Pierre. This material was largely affected by his personal life and past experiences. Songs came about in myriad ways. Many times, the band would write music first that Pierre would set words to, other times Pierre would write a song on guitar with words and bring it to the band. Pierre could often "spend hours and days and weeks and months on lyrics—sometimes they come quick, sometimes they don't come at all," he said. He noted that he had a screenwriting teacher