Modest Mouse
Good News For People Who Love Bad News
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Modest Mouse
Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Epic, 2004
RiYL: Pavement, Pixies, The Shins |
The nagging feeling that they were making stuff up as they were going along may have been true, but in retrospect, they made it work. Eric Judy's dogged, guitar-like bass playing would pound the same riffs into oblivion, but between Jeremiah Green's unorthodox and never incorrect interpretations of where the beat was and Isaac Brock's trademark vibrato'd guitar harmonics, a surprising number of beautiful new ideas always emerged.
Good News For People Who Love Bad News sounds more like a big-league debut than the Mouse's actual major-label bow, 2000's The Moon And Antarctica. A lot of major label-imposed ideas, like rhythm guitar and a heartbreakingly conventional new bass sound, combine to utterly ruin the record's first half. If you can make it through to News' innards, however, an EP's worth of something like better-recorded, more thought-out Lonesome Crowded West material awaits.
Sure, Isaac Brock plays more memorable banjo parts on this record than guitar bits. Sure, Judy seems so frustrated by being relegated to a sideman role that he barely plays bass on half the tracks. And most disappointingly, Green's replacement is a generic, unimaginative spare part whose inept attempt to imitate his illustrious predecessor's signature disco beat on "The View" makes you long for the robotic, inoffensive four-four thud he applies for the rest of the record. And as for the rhythm guitarist -- well, Modest Mouse needed a rhythm guitarist about as much as they needed the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Oh, and by the way....
The album's disappointing start is somewhat odd considering Modest Mouse's three best songs all (eventually) began albums; the fact there's nothing worth listening to until eight tracks in comes as nothing less than a shock. Even Antarctica, a difficult beast, put its prettiest melodies right up front. Good News begins with a horn intro (yeah, the DDBB is really on this record) and "The World At Large," a weak rewrite of "Third Planet," and continues into the label's idea of a single, "Float On."
The song is technically the album's most upbeat, but the addition of crappy background vocals and the subtraction of Green make it and its twin "Ocean Breathes Salty" completely disposable. "Dance Hall" represents the album's darkest moment right before the dawn, with impossibly repetitive lyrics and further moronic backing vocals.
Things pick up on "Bukowski," where Brock straps on his banjo, and the lyrics start becoming worth paying attention to. By "Satin In A Coffin," hope is restored, thanks to Judy's pump organ and some guest upright bass. Just in time for the album's best stretch, too. "Blame It On The Tetons" is an affecting Brock ballad, nicely setting up the perceptive "Black Cadillacs."
For the last three songs on the record Judy, figuring that record company execs are never going to listen this far in, returns to playing the bass in his accustomed style, and the effect is like a floodlight switching on. Brock even hits a few guitar harmonics, although producer Dennis Herring seems to have hidden his whammy bar. Closer "The Good Times Are Killing Me," despite a too-many-cooks collaboration with both the Flaming Lips and a military-style drum and fife band, stays anchored by its elastic low end and a typically blunt Brock vocal.
Good News For People Who Love Bad News will not disappoint hardcore Modest Mouse fans, who are all too familiar with albums overloaded with weak tracks and failed experiments. Even The Lonesome Crowded West, which seems to get better and better as the band gets farther removed from it, was overlong by about a third.
The new album's extreme, Jekyll-and-Hyde side division might throw you for a loop at first, but perhaps some of the first-half tracks will be growers as those from Antarctica's back end were. The worrying thing is that the kind of spontaneity that informed the band's best moments ("Dramamine," "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine," "Do The Cockroach") has seemed completely absent from the Mouse's first two shots at major-label stardom. If they want to get back to their glory days, the first thing Brock and Judy should do is get a real drummer. And for Pete's sake, fire the rhythm guitarist.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.