motion city soundtrack - More upbeat this time around.

I'm sorry," Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Pierre apologizes in the middle of a phone interview. "I'm not very articulate and I don't know how to express myself in a brief moment. I'm much more eloquent when I have the time to be - such as in writing music."

The singer and guitarist, who's calling from the first day of the Minneapolis fivesome's current headlining tour, does indeed have a tendency to expand his responses into extended rambles. But the long-winded answers, like both Motion City's music and the musician himself, contain an endearing quirkiness that's difficult to deny. The band's third album, the recently released Even If It Kills Me, is a prime example of this, offering an engaging collection of hooky pop-rock songs that just don't quite fit the mold - in a good way. Although the band didn't necessarily have any highlighted goals when penning the record, Pierre does note there were a few things it did - and didn't - want to accomplish.

"I had two thoughts," he says. "One was that I wanted it to be a lot more upbeat and fun and happy because I thought the last record was kinda angry. The other thing is that I didn't want to swear as much. Anybody can swear but it takes somebody with actual creativity to say something without the use of swear words. The key is that we as a band try to avoid the words "always' and "never.' To specifically attempt something is just as bad as to say "I'm never going to write a song about this.' I think after our first record I said, "I'm never going to write a song about a girl again,' and every song that's been written since has somehow involved girls."

Which begs the question: Are the songs on Even If It Kills Me about girls?

"One in particular," Pierre says. "Just one girl. I don't know how exactly she feels about it. I think she's kind of impartial. She's not necessarily a muse so to speak, but at the time it was weird because I didn't even know. I didn't know exactly what the record was about. I find that over time, ideas change - and I like that. I could pretend I know exactly what I'm doing, but really I just go with what comes out and try to figure out how that works within a song."

Compared with Motion City's past two albums - its 2003 debut I Am the Movie and 2005's slicker, poppier Commit This to Memory - the process of distilling this record was notably simpler, a fact that's mildly surprising when you consider the pressure the five members must have been under due to signing with major label Columbia. But Pierre notes that the writing and the recording of the album, mostly done in New York, was level sailing - with one exception.

"I was struggling a lot with coming with the lyrics," he explains. "Everything else was really easy. We had more songs than we could record. Everything was so different about this record. In the past, we barely had enough songs. We went way over on our time and our budgets. But because this record was so much easier, I had the hardest time writing."

So did Pierre come up with any notable tricks for coping with writer's block?

"Red meat and a lot of pornography," he jokes. "No, I think the biggest trick is just being okay with doing something for a long time and getting nowhere with it. It's more of an endurance contest. Most of my time writing this record was spent in a little tiny room in New York with coffee and maybe some pumpkin pie and nothing coming out and my bandmates in the next room playing Halo against 13 year olds on the Internet. And those 13-year-old kids have no idea they're playing against a 30 year old. You're going to have to transcribe all this, aren't you? Well, from what I've heard it's better than interviewing people with "yes' or "no' answers."

Motion City Soundtrack, Mae, Anberlin, Metro Station

7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 14, 2007, Agora Theatre, 5000 Euclid Ave., 216.881.2221, tickets: $19.99