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Music reviews |
Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
What other group can evoke both Talking Heads and Tom Waits on the same album? Cockeyed but brilliant, it's Modest Mouse's best.
Epic
Release date: 4/6/04
Rating: A-1. Horn Intro 0:09
2. The World at Large 4:32
3. Float On 3:28
4. Ocean Breathes Salty 3:49
5. Dig Your Grave 0:12
6. Bury Me With It 3:49
7. Dance Hall 2:57
8. Bukowski 4:14
9. This Devil's Workday 2:19
10. The View 4:13
11. Satin in a Coffin 2:35
12. Interlude (Milo) 0:58
13. Blame It on the Tetons 5:24
14. Black Cadillacs 2:43
15. One Chance 3:04
16. The Good Times Are Killing Me 4:16
What a pleasure it is to listen to a band that keeps getting better. Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the fourth album from Washington state’s Modest Mouse, is their best, just like each release that came before it.
If you’re not familiar with Modest Mouse, Good News, the band’s second major-label recording (after 2000’s brilliant, melancholy but uneven The Moon and Antarctica), probably won’t grab you immediately. The songs are complex, with lots of instrumentation, including plenty of angular, reverberating guitar. Lead singer / chief songwriter Isaac Brook barks, growls, semi-speaks or otherwise challenges his limited vocal range with the song’s dense, often angry lyrics.
Modest Mouse is not a warm and fuzzy kitten that jumps into your lap and demands to be loved. Modest Mouse, like so many other great bands whose appeal isn’t immediately evident – from the Pixies to Stereolab to TV on the Radio – is sort of like sushi. The first time you eat it, you can barely force it down. The next few times you try it, you drench it in soy sauce and wasabi and find that you’re getting it, sort of. Then all of a sudden you find yourself craving it.
Good News for People Who Love Bad News, which strays solidly into pop territory on occasion, is probably the best introduction to the group. While the record reveals a host of influences and doesn’t maintain a unified sound throughout its 48 minutes, it contains some of the best songwriting of the 00s. Add clean production (from Camper Van Beethoven's Dennis Herring), a tight rhythm section and instruments ranging from banjo to glockenspiel to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (a variety that doesn’t sound at all overdone or pretentious when it works, which is more often than not), and the result is a near-classic that reveals more upon each listen.
After a 9-second horn intro, the album opens with its strongest series of songs. Opener “The World at Large,” big single “Float On,” “Ocean Breathes Salty” (the one that makes me hit the repeat button the most), and even the angry “Bury Me with It” are surprisingly accessible – even upbeat – and frequently recall Talking Heads at their peak, which is hard for even similarly talented bands to pull off. The lyrics are either nonsensical goofiness (“Bad news comes don't you worry even when it lands / Good news will work its way to all them plans”) or half-assed attempts to address the big questions (“For your sake I hope heaven and hell / Are really there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath / You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?”). It’s hard to heap enough praise on the David Byrne-funk of “Float On,” the gorgeous guitars and harmonies on “Ocean Breathes Salty,” and the Frank Black / Kurt Cobain scream of “Bury Me with It.”
These set a high standard for the rest of the album, and unfortunately it’s not consistently met. The next three tracks burn out the clutch by shifting, oddly enough, into Tom Waits territory. Suddenly it’s all shuffling rhythms, growled vocals, and scuzzy Dixieland horns. (Even Tom Waits – himself an acquired taste – doesn’t make this work all the time.) Of these three, “This Devil’s Workday” is a particularly blatant carbon-copy of something from Mule Variations. The best of them, though, is “Bukowski,” with great banjo-picking (never thought I’d say that in a review) and Brook’s almost-rapped lyrics asking why someone would want to be Charles Bukowski ("Yeah, I know he's a pretty good read but / God who'd want to be such an asshole?") or God for that matter ("Who would want to be such a control freak?").
The next six full-length songs are all good – no clunkers – but only occasionally reach the same heights of the album’s opener. “The View,” for instance, has an inspired and melodic chorus and bridge, but the verses are a bit of a slog (and that lyric about “If it takes shit to make bliss / Well I feel pretty blissfully” is cringe-worthy). On the other hand, the driving “Satin a Coffin,” which returns to the howled energy of “Bury Me with It,” is one of the record’s best – perhaps because, at 2:35, it is over before it can become repetitive or meandering.
The pretty acoustic-guitar-and-violin “Blame It on the Tetons” does meander a bit (though the lyrics are quite literate), until about 3 minutes in when it pauses, then practically becomes a different, more compelling song. “Black Cadillacs” is as close to boring as the album gets, while the guitar-washed “One Chance” is likable but not memorable. The closing track, “The Good Times are Killing Me,” was produced by the Flaming Lips and provides a pleasant enough sendoff. While it’s clear they’re all having a good time on “Good Times,” though, it’s only a so-so song – it’s repetitive and heavy on the synthesizers.
Overall, though, Good News for People Who Love Bad News was one of 2004’s best albums by far. Not an easy album to like at first, but an easy one to love later on. Modest Mouse is a taste definitely worth acquiring, if you haven’t already.
