Good News for People Who Love Bad News

by

Modest Mouse

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This is one of the more remarkable albums that I have heard in the past couple of years. I previously had really loved THE MOON AND ANARCTICA, and though I might still have a slight preference for that album, GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE BAD NEWS clearly establish Modest Mouse as one of the best and certainly one of the most unique bands working in music today. Modest Mouse is one of those bands you know has to be comprised by a bunch of indiscriminate music fans. Hints of an astonishing range of musical artists seem to peek out from behind their various songs. I'm constantly being reminded by bits of their songs of artists as diverse as the Pixies, Talking Heads, Radiohead, Tom Waits, Pere Ubu, Yo La Tenga, Sam Phillips, and Built to Spill, as wall as a host of eighties New Wave bands. They have obviously internalized a lot of music and are capable of drawing from those resources as needed to create some grippingly exciting new songs. Sometimes the results would be jarring if they were so amazingly successful. For instance, how many bands manage to include a synthesizer and a banjo on the same song? They are constantly bringing in unexpected instruments or sounds that are not common to rock. I should also add that while a Pacific Northwest band, they really don't sound like a product of that region. The Seattle and Portland bands, for instance, do not seem to have exerted an especially large influence.

Being eclectic is not a guarantee of being especially good. In fact, it could lead to a dissipation of creative energies into such a variety of directions that a band could lack any musical focus whatsoever. Luckily, Modest Mouse manages to be amazingly musical while crafting startling songs. The musicality, the marvelous lyrics, the passionate vocals, and the hooks make every song memorable. And virtually every song is indeed a delight. As with other exceptional albums (as opposed to albums that contain a few good singles with less numbers filling out the disc), you don't want any of the songs to end, and yet when they do and the next song begins, you are equally as content with it. I'll be honest: over the past eight or nine years, I have sometimes felt that rock was in danger of becoming stale and uninteresting, and that the creativity that drove the genre in the sixties, the late seventies, and the eighties was waning. But bands like Modest Mouse are managing to give me hope once again.

If Good News For People Who Love Bad News is your first Modest Mouse experience then I'm sorry, but you've been taken for a ride straight into a brick wall. Sure, the first few songs on the album fill you with an energy that makes you want to bounce off the walls, but Modest Mouse didn't gain a devoted cult following by making repetative, radio-friendly, pop songs. Long time fans of the band are generally drawn to their music by Issac Brock's tangled web of lyrics which never fail to provoke the listener's sub-concious, as well as the volcanic explosion of the music which, in the same song, can transform from a wild rampage of ranting guitars and drums into a melodic harmony of strings that leave the listener exhausted from their heart racing. Good News For People Who Love Bad News lacks the raw, unkempt demeanor of their previous albums. Even the band's major label debut, Moon & Antarctica, features that unruly, sporadic sound which has attracted so many avid fans over the years. In my humble opinion, the old Modest Mouse sounded more honest and consumed by the music, and not like they were following the guidelines posted on a memo they recieved from a record exec who hasn't really payed attention to anything that's happened in music over the past ten years, so he's still out looking for the new Nirvana. Overall, Good News is too squeaky clean and prepared for the likes of me, but whatever, listen to what sounds good to you.