Modest Mouse is Dead- Ship has sank, go home
Written: Mar 20 '07 (Updated Mar 20 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Several moments are riotous enough to feel like vintage modest mouse.
Cons: Songs are predictable at first listen; "ocean" theme never ties together, sounds like cheap plastic.
The Bottom Line: There are so many more complete and beautiful records in this band's catalogue that they render this obsolete. Grab the best tracks and chuck it.
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| salivation's Full Review: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [Deluxe Edi... |
Anybody who listened to Modest Mouse post-Good News for People Who Love Bad News is likely to adore this album. It's saccharine sweet and full of the elasticity that they've become so magically renknowned for with "Good News".
Anybody Pre-Good News however, will suspect what the band's doing here; pretending. You could admire an album like The Moon and Antarctica because tackles the complete opposite of ballads and pop sensibility; so much to the point that by the end when they divulge every pretension hidden up their sleeve you know they've earned it in blood and sweat.
There's nothing like that on We Were Dead. It's not even funny or clever like Good News was. It is the next stage of the band's natural progression. They added a few new musicians to the mix which make the roguish looking original members look bizarrely out of place.
The guitars have been tuned down to ear static. I can recall only one moment on the whole album where they go balls-out (Coincidentally the best part of the album). The guest Shins-guy backing vocals add nothing and in many cases subtract from the songs.
At any rate, when you yourself draw comparisons to Franz Ferdinand about 6 times after hearing a total of 3 FF songs in your lifetime, and see critics doing the same thing, something is terribly wrong.
It's a bad album. HOWEVER, much like Isaac Brock on a coke fix (Referring to the soda I'm sure) it doesn't matter how much gristle and garbage gets in the way of the music, fans will take it, they'll listen to it, they'll enjoy it, they don't have to say they like it. No one will be pumping a fist to the swaying "Dashboard". "Fire it Up" is a Weezer song with Brock's vocals on top. "People as Places as People" may as well be a Postal Service song.
Fans all seem to agree on what the best songs are on the album. "Partin of the Sensory" is dark, atmospheric, string laden and climaxes with clapping, boot-stomping and erratic screaming of the genius Someday you will die somehow and something's gonna steal your carbon!
If you had a best-of, this would be on there, and probably Fly Trapped in a Jar, which follows suit with the band's still-there talent of winding the listener up with a single well-placed chorus of "One Wing isn't even enough to live". The intro guitar static even sounds like a fly, though Wire already pulled that out a long time ago.
I can recall one more song that really works, the simple and perfect Spitting Venom. Really though, the album is consumed by ballads, very predictable, dull and depressing ones. Little Motel has romantic assembly, but feels lazy and dishonest due to the fact that it is just so predictable.
Florida is virtually unlistenable, sounding like it was actually written around the horrible backing vocals. Missed the Boat is a nice melody, but too one-dimensional to have any real impact. Steam Engenius just plain sucks. At least they close the thing with a bang, but when all is said and done "Invisible" feels more like a bottle rocket compared to the atomic explosion that is "What People Are Made of"
And that will be the problem with listeners who have heard "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" or "Dramamine" or "Dirty Fingernails". The band has dulled every last edge. There are no more pointed teeth, no claws, no gristle, no distortion. I would prefer 60 minutes of random thrashing, discordant screaming and drums that sound like garbage cans to the inane predictability that the band has been reduced to.
And the clincher is that the title doesn't even ultimately tie to anything. This is "Good News" with a sailor hat on. TMaA had more references to the sea.
The album title is not the only misnomer though, I begin to suspect their modesty is starting to wear thin as well. I will only listen to this album 10 more times. Today.
Recommended:
March into the Sea
Parting of the Sensory
Fly trapped in a jar
Invisible
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
salivation
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Member: N
Location: Plantation, FL
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 26 members
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![We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [Deluxe Edition] [Digipak] by Modest Mouse](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/f1/db/96/2037220817-177x150-0-0.jpg)
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