CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

this entry brought to you by modest mouse, "little motel"





As I have been with many an important band, I was late to the Modest Mouse party. I'd been hearing of them for years, but in my tendency to approach low-budget indie bands with hesitation (the production of a lot of those revered indie bands from the 90's was so lo-fi it pissed me off) I'd never bothered to give them a try when they first started making rumblings in the indie scene. When Good News For People Who Love Bad News, their second major-label album, was released in 2004 and totally exploded with four utterly excellent singles, I bought the album for my wife, somehow sure that I wouldn't like the band despite the fact that the songs I'd heard were genius. But here's the weird part-- I listened to it once, enjoyed the heck out of it, then never listened to it again. I don't know why, but I had my mind made up that I wasn't going to be a Modest Mouse fan, even though I loved everything I heard. Then I listened to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank when the album was released back in March and was utterly in love within moments; by the end of it I declared it one of the best albums of the year.

First thing's first: a lot of hype has been made of Modest Mouse's surprise new member after the departure of founding guitarist Jeremiah Green, legendary ex-guitarist for The Smiths, Johnny Marr. Marr initially seemed to be a guest star, but has since become more or less a permanent member, playing every show of the band’s subsequent tour, and making no mention of any desire to leave. Yet it's difficult to tell how exactly he's changed the band's dynamic or sound-- again, my intimate knowledge of Modest Mouse only goes back as far as Good News, but going back and forth between listening to it and We Were Dead, it's difficult to assess a noticeable lack of anything in terms of guitar or more of anything else. Certainly, their sound is poppier than in their earlier records (which I've heard but haven't delved deeply into), but it doesn't seem out of line of the natural progression since their first major label record, The Moon and Antarctica. I've read since my first listen of We Were Dead that one of Marr's talents is his ability to blend seamlessly with whomever it is he's working with, and I'm going to have to agree.

Not being a long-time listener of Modest Mouse, I can't be sure if this is the band's normal M.O, but perhaps what I find so refreshing about We Were Dead is how much variety they find while maintaining the themes of finding the up side to being a pessimist, which has been a prevalent theme at least since Good News-- this could thematically be taken as a companion to that album, only with way more references to the sea and ships sinking. "Dashboard" and "We've Got Everything" are dance-able, jangly indie pop; "March into the Sea" and "Invisible" are dirgey, scorching rockers; "Little Motel" and "Missed the Boat" are lush and loving. But what's really surprising is how much variety Brock and co. have within songs themselves, going in completely unexpected directions and keeping you on your feet: "Parting of the Sensory" starts as a quiet, dreamy visage of the sea, then takes a dark turn as Brock wonders who in the hell made an object of derision the boss, later abruptly changing pace again and ending with a clapping, stomping ho-down with Brock promising that the song's nemesis is so useless that even the carbon his body leaves is going to be stolen by something more important. Elsewhere, on "Spitting Venom", Brock starts a grouchy ditty that completely changes course and turns into a hoarse-voiced scorcher with the singer shouting "I didn't know there was a score / It looks like you're the winner, I ain't gonna play no more!"

The album is filled with these kinds of musical sleight-of-hands and shifts of gear, where even songs that don't sound like they're going to do anything for you suddenly turn into a something gorgeous, poignant, and, well, blissfully noisy. I may not be familiar with the entire Modest Mouse catalogue to hear the artistic progression from album to album, but it's obvious here that Brock and his crew are well accomplished and deftly reach into their bag of tricks so artfully and with such confidence it's obvious it'll be a long while before they even start to reach the bottom of it.
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Yesterday, Last Year A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE! ROLLING STONE! ANGER MANAGEMENT! THE PERSON OF THE YEAR! on last year's POLARITY!
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with love from CRS @ 8:16 AM 

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