The Wake

When Jewel crawled out of her minivan and onto MTV, warbling the song “Intuition,” her fans probably felt that something was off. Gone were the screams of “ugly girl—you want to kill her,” reminiscent of John Lennon is his primal therapy days. In their place was a crappy, pseudo-Middle Eastern beat and an album full of tracks inspired by text messages, like “U and Me = Love.” She had self-admittedly sold out, betraying her fan base of vegan fourteen-year-olds.

Many people seem to fear that their indie “pet” band will follow Jewel’s path. As one after the other appear on the O.C. soundtrack, we lament the days when we could enjoy The Shins without being asked whether we had seen Garden State. With the release of their newest album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse fans have become especially fearful of the looming presence of Modest Mouse on the iPod of the undeserving.

It started with some animated cut-out lambs bouncing along on VH1, narrating the band’s first break-out hit, “Float On.” The song was a clanging, banging anthem of ironic, “who are we kidding” optimism, fueled by its central image of the masses, light as bubbles, continuing on by the inertia of their own emptiness. The album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, was, ironically, propelled into Target by the reliability of the single, and perhaps in part by the appeal of its minimalist cover art: a bleeding green wall shot with pink arrows.

However, the album for the most part showed no sings of selling out. Instead, it was a cabaret show of all the different sides of singer Isaac Brock. The song “Bukowski,” full of spotlight rants and plucky guitars, is an angry examination of his relationship with the beatnik himself, asking, “Who would want to be such an asshole?” As unlikely as it seemed that this rhetorical question would solicit anything but a few blinks from the crowd on MTV’s Total Request Live, fans remained weary.

The new album, with a title seemingly designed to single out the most tragic of listeners, is a slightly different chronicle of Isaac Brock’s misery. He’s recruited Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, who helps ensure the presence of some chaos in every song.

The first single on the album, “Dashboard”, feels far away from the usual intimacy of a Modest Mouse song, as if recorded while Brock is strangling a microphone in a karaoke roller rink. The guitars are scuzzy and panicked, finally erupting into cinematic Bollywood strings, as the chorus ruminates, “It could have been, should have been worse than you would ever know.” It’s missing a certain sincerity, but it makes for good treadmill music.

“Spitting Venom” is an epic track reaching almost nine minutes. It begins with a skippy introduction, but quickly tunnels into a flurry of urgent chord. After putting the listener through this storm, the song provides a complete tone change. Horns and whispers sparkle subtly around one another until it becomes a fanfare fit for sending a President to the moon. The song continues on for three minutes in a luxurious progression clearly meant to reminisce to.

Fans of “Gravity Rides Everything,” will be pleased by the track “People as Places as People,” which claims, “We’re the people that we wanted to know, and we’re the places that we wanted to go.” The lyric is an interesting idea, considering our culture so centered on “reality” based entertainment, exposing the positive side to our obsession with strangers. Unfortunately, in the end the track fails to truly conjure the tenderness of the former Modest Mouse, instead submitting to a repetitive, radio-friendly fade out.

Brock still expertly hollows out the darkest moments into organic audio landscapes. In “Parting of the Sensory,” hand claps and swirling fiddles create a ghostly feeling, reminding us incessantly, “Someday you will die and something’s going to steal your carbon.” One of the best tracks, “Fly Trapped In A Jar,” essentially consists of buzzing, horns, and Brock asking with a broken, sloppy shout, “One wing: is it even enough to live?” Throughout the album, mentions of carbon and flies are repeated, like reading a grown up’s version of Book of Virtues.

Ultimately, it seems that Brock has become a bit more comfortable recording with Epic Records, straining less to prove himself as inventive to the extremes of Good News. Do yourself a favor and enjoy this album away from the politics, appreciating the natural maturation of a band with a decade of experience.