I think i’m in the minority on this, judging by conversations i’ve had about Modest Mouse in the last couple years, but i think signing to a major label and going commercial was the best thing to ever happen to this band. Prease for me to exprain:
I was introduced to MM via The Lonesome Crowded West, a sprawling soundscape of indie-folk desperation fueled by a sparse instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums, fueled by a frankensteined blend of Pixies- and Built to Spill-inspired guitar work that built Isaac Brock into something not far removed from an indie-rock guitar hero. The bent notes and sea chanty-inspired rhythms and melodies won me over instantly. But i’ve always had a problem with TLCW that my close friends have heard me drone on about for years–it’s too goddamn long. 15 tracks, two of which are over six minutes, one seven, and one nearly eleven? The album suffers from a lack of streamlining and a propensity for hippified jamming that serves to remind me why i hate bullshit patchouli bands like Phish. And seriously, folks–as soon as anyone compares a facet of your music to Phish, you’re in trouble.
The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse’s first release for Epic, didn’t exactly thrill me, save for a few songs here and there (”Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” = tha dope jam, y’all), but in the wake of what came after, i’m willing to write it off as a transitional piece, a bridge between the complete artistic freedom of the independent record label and the artistic constraint that is the nature of the “big leagues.”
Because, Good News For People Who Love Bad News? It grew on me like a chronic case of athlete’s foot–sure, the itch is annoying at first, but eventually scratching it feels so damn good that you find yourself looking forward to the itch coming back and you stop using the cream you bought at Jewel Osco (or is that just me? Ladies, i’m single). See, i’m picturing an approach to Good News that envisioned harnessing the stark originality of MM’s infinitely charming and engaging musicianship and lyrics, and shoehorning it into the framework of three-minute radio-ready Billboard singles. The result, if you ask me, was a case study in the way a major label album should sound–instead of steamrolling over the artist’s creativity for the sake of the lowest common denominator, the Powers That Be chose instead to force a guiding hand that reigned in the noodling and focused the band’s brilliance into tightly compressed chunks of laser-accurate precision. The result? “Hold On” became the soundtrack for the most bizarre collision of galaxies since NGC 6745. Take it from me, folks: when a band that your friends’ old band opened for in front of 20 people in Green Bay almost 10 years ago is being used as between-inning bumper music at Miller Park during a Brewers game, walls are collapsing and worlds are redshifting. (Let’s not even discuss the Modest Mouse ringtone i downloaded from T-Mobile for my cell phone, ok? That right there was an entire Negative Zone of whatthefuck.)
But unlike most radio singles from formerly relevent indie-rock heroes looking to cash in, “Float On” and the rest of Good News was actually really fricking good and served to make the band perhaps even more relevent than they were. Maybe i’m in the minority, but i’m of the school of thought that suggests that the presence of such a quirky radio single in the mass consciousness is (haw haw) Good News, an oasis of artistry in a desert of American Idol winners and Weezer’s death rattle. Sure, the mellow “we’ll all be ok” vibe of the song’s lyrics unfortunately attracted their share of hippie-wannabe frat boy Phish-heads (to which the show i saw in ‘05 in Milwaukee can attest), but i guess that’s an unfortunate side-effect of writing organic music that would have been tailor-made for an episode of MTV Unplugged back in the day. Let’s not hold that against them, eh?
OK, so this finally brings us to the new album (sheesh, how was that for setup? I’m thanking God we don’t have editors, and i’m sure you’re cursing your deity of choice right about now) We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, which eagerly continues down the radio-ready path Good News trailblazed, taking what the last album began and improving on it tenfold. That’s right, folks: this record kicks Good News‘ ass up and down the field. While Good News had its share of quality singles (”Ocean Breathes Salty” and “One Chance” both could have made quality follow-ups to “Float On”), We Were Dead is practically nothing but. “Dashboard,” “Fire it Up,” “Florida,” and “Missed the Boat” are all golden, and “We’ve Got Everything” is a goddamn barnburner that sounds like a perfect synthesis of 80s New Wave/Europop and a modern indie-rock booty-shaker (hrm, maybe that’s where Johnny Marr’s influence is exerting itself. For the life of me, i can’t figure out what he’s contributing to the band that’s any different than what they were already doing). And that’s just five out of the first six tracks on the album!
Where Good News had noticeable filler in the middle with clunkers like “Dance Hall” and “Bukowski,” We Were Dead just does not let up. “Fly Trapped in a Jar” keeps alive the band’s love of occasional banjo and jug-band instruments (albeit limited to the intro, unlike “This Devil’s Workday” from the last record), and “Education” and “Steam Engenius,” despite being stuck in the middle of the sequencing, still avoid sounding like filler thanks to championship-level pop songwriting and arranging. Hell, even the requisite 8-minute jam, “Spitting Venom” makes every second count; the repeated horn-accented drone at the end is more enthralling than boring.
The band saved the best track on the record for the end, though. “Invisible” builds trademark Modest Mouse stacatto guitar licks over classic Modest Mouse 4/4 stomp to deliver a blood-pumping closing number. It’s forceful, catchy as hell, and just plain kicks ass.
If you ask me (and you’re reading this, so you must have), Modest Mouse have just delivered the best record of their career 14 years after their inception, and that’s a hell of a feat. If the record industry had any sense at all, they would use We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank as a template for how rock music should be approached on a major label scale in the age of singles and filesharing. Instead of looking for the next lowest-common denominator vanilla squillion-times-platinum sensation, they should take the time to invest their cash in truly original talents like Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse, embracing their gifts instead of fighting them. And those bands, in a perfect world, would be willing to play the game enough to let the label hone their talents in a way that plays on their strengths and sands away their weaknesses (in this case, MM’s hopefully long-gone tendency toward jamming). Sadly, i’m sure Modest Mouse will ultimately prove the exception while we continue to be inundated with the latest Taylor Hicks release, or–God help us–a reanimated Weezer.
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I can actually see that, having driven through plenty of the West myself on tour. I guess i can appreciate the mood of the record in that context. The last few songs just get really tiresome for me in general, though (which i suppose maybe is the point?).
But “Cowboy Dan,” along with “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child” and pretty much most of the first half of the record is effing brilliant.
I find it ironic that you celebrate the lack of editing in your own writing while simultaneously celebrating the editing of the modest mouse sound into a “radio friendly” format.
I love Lonesome Crowded West exactly for the reason you dislike it. It’s raw, uncut and “immediate.” All the intangeables are left to breathe and take the space and *time* they need to deliver their emotional impact. It’s not “shoe horned” into something it’s not.
The glossy, mass produced pop production of the new MM wrings out any soul the songs may have had and flushes it down the toilet. It sounds generic. The new drummer even plays generic pop drums on a generic sounding drum kit.
I also don’t have a problem with “jamming.” I think Led Zeppelin was a jam band in the best possible way. Phish sucks because all they do is noodle pointlessly and have no real songs. But jamming within the emotional context of a good song can be extremely effective - and that’s exactly what the old MM did. It’s what I miss most.
If I’m going to listen to pop trash, I’ll listen to Brittney rather than Brock.
I find it ironic that you celebrate the lack of editing in your own writing while simultaneously celebrating the editing of the modest mouse sound into a “radio friendly†format.
Haha. Touche’, Joe.
Like i said, i realize i’m in the minority. And now that i’ve written this, i find it scary that i agree in some ways with the Pitchfork reviewer who gave this a 7.8. Yikes. But hey, that’s the beauty of subjective listening. I can see all your points…other than “If I’m going to listen to pop trash, I’ll listen to Brittney rather than Brock.” That’s just messed up, yo.
well said chap. i can’t wait until my lunchbreak to pick up my “official” copy and see what’s on the free 7″ they’re giving away with it.
and one more thing. i loved that they used the line “we were talkin’ soda pop, we talked it quite alot” in spitting venom as it originally appeared in what i consider to be one of the best mm songs ever, white lies, yellow teeth. if you’ve never heard it do yourself a favor and find it. i’m willing to say it’s my favorite mm song yet!
It’s not “shoe horned†into something it’s not.
So, the fact that they extended the ending of “Truckers Atlas” that long just so they could have a 74-minute CD means that it’s bloated into something it’s not?
What I find really amazing about Modest Mouse’s popularity is that they really haven’t changed their sound radically. With a few production differences and two or three less people in the band, most of their current songs fit pretty comfortably with the earlier ones.
So, am I alone in thinking that maybe — and this is a big maybe; the jury’s still out — a good chunk of Modest Mouse’s best music isn’t released on LPs? For me, at least, half the fun of listening to them is trying to figure out where they’re headed on their next album by piecing together snippets from singles and EPs (And usually failing miserably in the process. When I first heard “Hold On,” I thought “Oh, shit. What is this? But hey, it’s catchy.”).
But maybe I’m just odd.
So, the fact that they extended the ending of “Truckers Atlas†that long just so they could have a 74-minute CD means that it’s bloated into something it’s not?
Josh,
I’ve never heard that and I’m skeptical that the reason it was done was “only’ to fill empty space. If they extended the song, I would believe they pushed the song to the limits of the media to enhance the meaning of the song. It’s a song about a very very very very long drive. It makes good semiotic sense that it would be a very very very long song and quite frankly, I like it that way. If they did it just to fill the space as you say, why that song? why not fill it with random noise, why go through the trouble to extend that particular song?
But beyond that, my argument wasn’t entirely about song length. It was about the sound of the recording itself and the performance of the songs. There are songs of comparable length TLCW and We Were Dead. But the recording of TLCW sounds gritty, open, real, present, immediate.. I feel like I’m there when I listen to it. I listen to “Dashboard” on the radio and it bores me. The production is totally uninteresting, fake sounding and generic. It might even be a good song, but I can’t get past the candy coated production values and watered down performance.
TLCW is like swimming in a small lake in the summer. We Were Dead is the pool at the YMCA. I like swimming, but I’ll take the sand in my shorts and seaweed in my hair over a chlorinated for your protection, fluorescent lit pool any day. And I’ll take Bob Marley over Eric Clapton too.
One reason I can’t stand the new MM stuff is the change in Isaac’s vocal style. I think it’s a pretty drastic change, in fact. Now it seems like he’s settled into playing a character in his songs. Unfortunately it’s a character who sounds like he’s constantly on the verge of vomiting when he sings.
Modest Mouse are an enigma to me… I got really into them around the time “This is a really long title to remember when typing on an internet BBS” came out, and I was really into them for awhile.
Even saw them a couple times on the same tour (incidentally, the Shins were opening one of the times, and nobody paid the slightest attention to them since it was in the middle of a heat wave in SF… my friend famously said: “I like them, but with a name like the Shins, I don’t think they will ever get anywhere” ha hah ha)
Then I got sort of… out of them… and stopped paying attention around when Moon and Antarctica came out (about 4 kick ass songs, including Tiny Cities… which I totally agree with), then I heard that Float on song on the “modern rock” station out here, and was like: “hey, that’s alright”
So I guess I like them again?!?
Should I be checking this album out then?
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Comment by Christine — March 20, 2007 @ 6:40 am
I would agree that The Moon and Antarctica is too long, but I think that TLCW is, for the most part, fucking brilliant because it felt angrily mimetic of what life in the West was actually LIKE for me–a bunch of aimless yet heartfelt driving around. Yeah, it’s true that I have to be in the mood for this mimesis, but when I am, WOW. I used to listen to TLCW on road trips up 80 and I-5, when one gets away from the cities to what the heart and soul of Northern California is really about… truckers and trailer trash. Speaking of the former, the three long tracks are all strong… and you can’t tell me that “Cowboy Dan” wasn’t eerily prophetic of our current administration. Phish, my ass!