Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

I listened to it once, wasn't crazy about it. I've got to give it another try.

To me, Isaac Brock sounds like Brak when he sings. Am I alone here?

I've never been a Modest Mouse fan, but the new single, "Dashboard" has appealed to me more than any of their past stuff.

Besides, I think the title of this album is great. I'll have to give it a listen.

Are you kidding me? I'm only just now getting used to "Good News For People Who Love Bad News". Ask my opinion in about 3 years.

I was never much of a Modest Mouse fan, but I caught the video for Dashboard a couple weeks ago in LA when, racked by insomnia, I was channel surfing in the wee hours of the morning. I was surprised at how much I liked it, and the melody has been stuck in my head ever since (maybe it's time to see somebody about that?). I guess I like it enough to buy the CD--we'll see where it goes from there.

Dashboard's great, but almost all the other songs on the album are even better, particularly Florida and Parting of the Sensory.

Damn. Modest Mouse does was Arcade Fire almost did. Crazy times.

I have afeeling this number is boosted by people who loved their last album and bought this one blind. I'm betting (but hope I'm wrong) that they'll drop down the charts relatively fast.

Sorry buddy, but Modest Mouse is getting pretty mainstream. I always rip on my indie-rock friends because all of their bands are getting huge. Like Interpol or Franz Ferdinand.

I'm halfway through the album right now. "Dashboard" is a lot of fun but Fire it Up is what I forsee me humming in the future. A lot easier to get into than "Good News", which I love but took me quite a few listens before I could really dig into it.

Didn't anyone read the Rolling Stone interview with Issac? Any guy who hates Dead Heads is alright by me.

A lot more dancy than their last album, Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again. It's also sounds a lot less angry, which I kind of miss. But I'm liking it so far.

It's more subtly and subversively nihilistic than previous records.

I've been a big MM fan for years and years, and I'm really digging this a lot more than Good News. It's overall not as good as The Moon and Antartica, but it's still their second best album in my mind. Although the more i listen to it the more I'm loving the second half of the disc, so it may not be long before I decide it is the best.

Really, though, I'm happy about this evolution. Modest Mouse would have eneded up being boring as hell if they pumped out a bunch of stuff that sounded like Lonesome Crowded West. Not that that's a bad album at all.

Chicks dig it.

i never liked modest mouse before now. i've listened to a few of there earlier albums, and my opinions have ranged from "this sucks" to "its not horrible, but i just cant get into it." a friend of mine gave me their new album, and i listened, and to my surprise, i like it, i like it a lot. this album seems a lot less silly to me. i actually believe isaac brock's anger now, instead of just laughing because it sounded too angry and fake, and his melancholy sadness on some tracks sounds like real sadness now, instead of just a goofy voice singing quietly.

Don't waste your money. Bleech.

This album blows.

"Blows" seems pretty harsh, but I've already relegated the album to the "bargain bin". By the end of the year, I'll probably have forgotten about its existence.

That was my expected response before I heard it (based on early reports), but it's growing on me quite a bit. I'm not sure if it's better than "Good News," but it's more listenable, if that makes sense. And both hang together better than Moon and Antarctica and the other earlier stuff I've heard.

GOOD NEWS is Modest Mouse at their erratic, playful best. In comparison, the new disc sounds like a Modest Mouse cover band doing their best impersonation of what a mainstream Modest Mouse album should sound like. GOOD NEWS was a revelation that Isaac Brock and gang could be a legitimate, quirky pop outfit. WE WERE DEAD has too much self-awareness of that approach that almost every tune falls flat on its pedestrian ass. The layers of irony and color have been washed away. What's left for the most part but only exoskeleton songs with no focus or urgency, and worst of all, ordinary choruses used to carry the weight of the tunes. Disappointing is a huge understatement.

And, oddly enough, that was my expected response almost to a tee. But I'm finding that's actually not the case. Obviously, the new songs play up the pop sheen, but, taken as whole compositions, they're pretty unusual, complete with some unexpected stylistica and tempo changes ("Florida" and "Spitting Venom," for instance). Pop they are, but pedestrian they ain't. A number of the deceptively pop-sounding songs are actually a lot more complex than the shambling folk stuff that took up a lot of Good News ("Satin in a Coffin" and "Bukowski" aren't much more than one-note Waitsian riffs given character by clever instrumentation). Plus, that pop sheen comes partially courtesy of Johnny Marr's guitar, which I think (along with James Mercer's vocals on a couple tracks) adds a nice, bright texture that offsets Brock's pessimism.

I thought Brock was on top of his game, lyrically, on Good News, but he's still continuing in that more confessional (if dark - although I never caught all that much irony, honestly) vein, rather than reverting back to the free associative, Pixies-esque style of stuff like "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" or "The Stars are Projectors," and I think that's a good thing.

Self-aware? Yeah, maybe. But I don't think that's a bad thing. They've found a few styles that worked for them on the last album and are just exploring them further. This doesn't sound like a sell-out move to me, I guess, but a recognition of some things they do particularly well.

It's interesting that you would say that, because I had a conversation just last night about this exact same point. I actually see Good News as the cover band, and We Were Dead as the guys taking a satirical look at that. I think about the track Miised the Boat specifically as making fun of the weird and seemingly out of place optimism of Float On because it sounds happy but is actually extremely negative.

As a whole, and on a much more superficial level, this album is a lot more coherent than Good News, which was just all over the place.

It seemed like I was set to love this album. I think very highly of GOOD NEWS (I'll stand by my "masterpiece" statement in the Modest Mouse thread I created), and all of the pre-release buzz pointed to a direction that owed a lot to GOOD NEWS' pop sensibilities. With a few exceptions ('Little Motel', 'People As Places As People'), there's not much here I'm latching on to. Maybe "pedestrian" wasn't the best way to describe the material--boring and empty is more fitting. When they do try some interesting compositions ('Parting of the Sensory', 'Steam Engenius', 'Spitting Venom'), they can't keep the momentum going and run out of steam (no pun intended) earlier than any song should. They didn't sell-out. That's not what I was implying with my previous post. They just failed to push their creative boundaries to the stratosphere.

The superficiality of WE WERE DEAD is its biggest downfall. It may be an easier album to digest in comparison to GOOD NEWS, but, repeated plays, for me, at least, have revealed an album that lacks the important connection between audience and artist. WE WERE DEAD has become nothing more than background music.

I like the album. Just my opinion, but I like the mood conveyed, pop or not.

I'm going to give it a few more listens before I decide if my first reaction (that it blows) is still accurate.

What always attracted me to Modest Mouse -- beyond the amount of racket a three-piece could make while still being able to stop on a dime (see: Teeth Like God's Shoeshine) -- was Brock's lyrics and the voice he uses to sell the simplest sentiment (see: Cowboy Dan; Neverending Math Equation). This album seems to lack the lyrical elements I liked the best from MM, which is why I didn't like it as much as Good New, Moon, or Lonesome Crowded West.

This isn't to say I want a band to stay the same forever; an artist needs to evolve. But, as a fan, if I don't like the way the band evolved, then I don't need to journey with them. I think this will be the last MM record I buy.

Man -- first a bad Tool album now a crappy MM record. This sucks...