Nostalgia can go sour in a hurry. If you’re not careful, it gets all mushy and rose-colored, like life was over once you grew up. But toss in some humor and a bit of self-awareness, and it gets a lot more interesting: the past still arguing with the present. On ‘Relive It’, Sacramento’s self-described middle-aged teen pop group turns that argument into eleven compact blasts of guitar-driven pop, punk velocity, oversized choruses, and gleefully adolescent energy.
Motorcycle is a funny idea before anyone plays a note. The band is Chris Sabatoni on vocals and guitar, Kortnee Angel on vocals and bass, and Matt Hull on drums, and even the name sounds like it’s going 100 mph. They mash ’90s alt-rock guitars and old-school pop punk together with the huge, shout-it-from-the-rafters sound of 2010s radio hits, and they go so happily over the top that you can’t tell where the joke ends and the love begins. That blurry line is a big part of the record’s charm. Motorcycle clearly knows how silly some of this can be, but they also know that sincerity is not something to apologize for.
“Down That Roud” opens the album with exactly the sort of typo-friendly exuberance its title promises. Distorted guitars and a rhythm section that never glances at the speedometer drive the song forward. Under all that kid-like rush is something older and wiser: the need to keep moving, even though youth isn’t waiting at the next exit. Motorcycle’s songs often operate on two levels at once, offering the immediate pleasure of a loud, catchy rock song while quietly acknowledging that the people making it have accumulated a few more years than the archetypal punk protagonist.
“Relive It” takes that contradiction and places it directly in the foreground. The title sounds like it’s telling you to go back in time, but the music gets that memory is never the real thing. You can put the old songs on, laugh at the old jokes, pull out the old clothes, and think about the people, but you can’t bring back whatever it was that made all of it matter. Motorcycle does not become morose about this. Instead, the band turns the impossibility into fuel, producing a song that sounds as though someone has plugged nostalgia into an amplifier and turned the volume all the way up.
“Spinning Out Of Control” fits the group’s aesthetic naturally, and Chris and Kortnee’s vocals give the track an extra dose of pop immediacy. Having two singers lets Motorcycle swing between personal confession and communal singalong, which matters for music that so often treats friendship as both refuge and source of chaos. Matt’s drums keep even the glossiest hooks moving.
“Here But Not Here” adds a reflective streak without losing speed. It’s about being physically there while your mind drifts off to some other time, some other version of you, some other life. Being an adult can feel like arguing with the person you thought you’d be by now, and Motorcycle makes pop-rock out of that instead of self-help, which feels like the right call. “Don’t Even Try” and “Keep Running” go together really well. One’s a shrug, the other’s a sprint, and together they sound like the conflicting advice we give ourselves when life gets messy: give up, keep going, stop caring, care more. The band lives in that contradiction. They remember when running faster seemed like it could solve anything.
“Forgot Who My Friends Are” adds another layer. Pop punk has always been obsessed with friendship, loyalty, and the bond of the group, and Motorcycle gives that a grown-up ache. People move. Priorities change. Staying close gets harder. Friends who once filled every day slowly become names in a phone. The bright, bouncy sound only sharpens it, because the party is part of what’s slipping away. “Friday The 13th” has a horror-movie title and the spirit of a party that’s gone a little off the rails. Motorcycle gets the fun of turning an ordinary date into an excuse for theatrical behavior. The energy is deliberately oversized, recalling the big, ridiculous enthusiasm of Andrew W.K. while keeping the melodic directness of classic pop punk. “Get Caught” carries that mischief forward, suggesting the anticipation of consequences is often more interesting than the consequences themselves.
By “Just Forget Me,” the album’s emotional undercurrent is hard to ignore. Forgetting is one of the record’s recurring fantasies, but Motorcycle knows memory doesn’t take requests. The song has that familiar pop-punk urge to outrun emotional mess with volume and speed, yet its very existence contradicts it: a song asking to be forgotten is already an attempt to stick around. “All In My Head” closes the album by turning inward. The title could mean anxiety, nostalgia, romantic confusion, or the realization that many of adulthood’s most stubborn conflicts happen inside you. Motorcycle doesn’t try to resolve any of it. They leave it wrapped in guitars, drums, and hooks, with the feeling that the party might keep going even after everyone admits they’re too old for it.
Ted Angel’s recording and mixing keep the directness of the three-piece while letting the band’s pop instincts run at full size, and Bart Thurber’s mastering gives the album the punch it needs. The sound is bigger than a trio should be, but it never loses the feel of three people making loud music together. Motorcycle doesn’t treat adulthood as the enemy of youth so much as its inevitable sequel. The record remembers Lookout! Records, cheap drinks, summer nights, dumb decisions, and the heady belief that friendship would last forever, but it doesn’t pretend those memories are enough. Chris, Kortnee, and Matt understand that growing older means carrying the past without being able to live in it. That’s why the humor and the melancholy fit together so easily. Motorcycle jabs at middle age, punk nostalgia, teenage recklessness, and likely themselves, never cruelly. The love for the music that shaped them is obvious. ‘Relive It’ isn’t a reenactment. It’s a salute to the strange fact that the kid inside you outlives the actual kid.
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