Yesterday saw the release of Motion City Soundtrack's first record for Columbia Records (after three with Epitaph), and it looks like the leap to the major label has already given the Minneapolis-reared quintet a leg up commercially -- and critically!

Entertainment Weekly gave the album, titled "My Dinosaur Life," an A- review, saying it sounds like "Weezer before they got weird." And Spin magazine gave it a 3.5 star review, saying the record "may well trigger their long-awaited breakthrough." It's at least breaking through on iTunes, where the album is currently ranked No. 4 on the album chart (No. 1 is Spoon's wildest and second- or third-best disc to date, "Transference").

Since I don't get a chance to delve into the record in my feature on the band that's running in Friday's newspaper (timed to their sold-out gig Saturday at First Avenue), I thought it worth adding my critical support to "My Dinosaur Life" here. MCS has always been mightier and more infectious than the cookie-cutter emo-rock pack it has been bunched in with, and that shows in the disc's most overtly radio-friendly tracks such as "A Lifeless Ordinary" and "Her Words Destroyed My Planet" as much as it does stormier fare such as the Jawbox-derived "Disappear" and the truly CD-closer, "The Weakends." It's hard to dismiss any of the songs despite their slick Mark Hoppus production, in part because they still pretty well rock with their you-know-what out. But frontman Justin Pierre is also a clever if sometimes too cutesy wordsmith, and he does a charming job playing the role of Joe Loser here. In "Her Words," for instance, he sings about how he sold his X-Box and stopped smoking weed to try to win back a girl. Man, she must've been some girl.

Local favoritism aside, I would much rather hear these songs on Top 40 radio and MTV2 than 95% of the corporate-funded music out there. It'll be very interesting to see if MCS can indeed breakthrough.