I don't care what holiday you're celebrating / have celebrated this time of year, whether it be Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Boxing Day, or even Chrismukkah (because yes, the O.C. rocks, I can admit it, so can you) -- for most people, this time of year means a time of giving and receiving gifts. So today, given that it's Christmas time for practicing Christians such as myself, I'm going to share with you a gift that was given to me, for no particular reason other than the fact that the giver had it to give. I am, of course, talking about
Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the new-ish album from Modest Mouse, which was given to me by our own
speeddemon531, as he had an extra copy of the album just lying around. Instead of selling it for the eight bucks he surely could have gotten on half.com for it, he decided to send it to me as part of our recent mix trade. And you know what? My year is that much better for it. So thanks, Mike.
* * *
It was actually while listening to
Good News's predecessor that I figured out exactly what it was about Modest Mouse that was appealing to me so much. It was in the strangely seamless transition between the industrial stomp of "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" (which very well could be the coolest song...EVER) and the acoustic strum of "A Different City" that I figured it out: Modest Mouse is managing to exemplify everything that I hoped Beck would back when I was obsessed with
Mellow Gold. Now, Beck, he's gone other directions into greatness, which is fine and dandy--his album-length stylistic shifts are always interesting and rarely dip in quality. Still, on
Mellow Gold and its surrounding singles, we were witnessing the development of an artist who simply could not be pegged down--there was absolutely no telling what genre, style, or even voice Beck might employ from one song to the next. That chameleon-esque willingness to change styles on a whim is what led me into the throes of Obsessive Beck Fandom (tm), even if the unpredictability factor of late has fallen by the wayside.
Not so with Modest Mouse.
On
Good News alone, we get new wave disco stomp, anthemic rock 'n roll, drunken sea shanty, and quiet acoustic folk. There are a total of sixteen tracks here, thirteen (well, maybe twelve and a half) of which are proper songs, and it's enough to leave even listeners who haven't thought circles around the vaguely paradoxical title of the album just a bit disoriented. Add to that the utterly bizarre vocal stylings of one Isaac Brock, who here lets his vocal tics and idiosyncrasies take center stage, rather than hiding them in the multitracking of
The Moon and Antarctica. Indeed, I'd say that Modest Mouse's second major label album is even more dense and difficult than its first, big hit single notwithstanding.
Ah, but what a single it is.
I can't even fathom that even Modest Mouse's most ardent supporters had any inkling that the Mouse would ever have a tremendous hit single. But there's "Float On", as ubiquitous and hard to avoid as Green Day and Destiny's Child, singlehandedly responsible for a rash of epileptic fits in teenagers as they try to emulate the Tasmanian David Byrne-Devil of the verse. Indeed, anomalies like this are why radio will never truly die...but I digress. Where was I?
"Float On" deserves to be played in stadiums. The drums, especially, are the selling point, as they thump and grind at a butt-out-of-seat ratio of one thousand per second. Not only that, but it's happily optimistic, or at least not as depressing as the songs that surround it.
The rest of the album, then, is a surprisingly dark meditation on death and soured relationships--relationships with friends, lovers, and God, all of which are systematically thrown overboard, as Brock emotes such sentiments as
God, I sure hope you are dead and
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste the afterlife? When Brock isn't putting everyone else down, he manages to center on himself as the source of his woes, as lines like
if it takes shit to make bliss well i feel pretty blissfully and
i like songs about drifters, books about the same / they both seem to make me feel a little less insane come to the forefront. Regardless of the source of his woes, however, Brock is not a terribly happy man. Lyrically, the album is probably the most effective bout with chronic unhappiness (not rage, not anger, not mad at your parents, but straight-up
unhappiness) that I've seen this year.
Highlights? Well, other than "Float On", which I've already mentioned, "The View" always sticks out for its Disco stylings and Devo keyboards. "Satin in a Coffin" and "Bukowski" are some of the best displays of angst-ridden banjo I've heard all year, with shocking, titillating lyrics to boot. Wishing death on someone in one song and calling God a control freak in the other, they're two of the most venomous things the album has to offer. "Blame it on the Tetons" is an understated statement of resignation, while "Dancehall" and "Black Cadillacs" just make me want to boogie. And then there's "Bury Me With It", the most bizarre statement of a tenuous grasp on the little things 2004 has offered. Indeed, it seems that "The Good Times are Killing Me" serves as a fitting conclusion to the album, as Brock's story is one of reaching for that which is good in life with such manic verve as to sacrifice oneself and others to attain it. The futile nature of such a sentiment is surely not lost on Mr. Brock, and he plays the part of the psychotic protagonist with the energy of a seasoned (and highly caffeinated) actor.
I'm nothing less than mesmerized by
Good News for People Who Love Bad News, not to mention one of the few who prefers it to
The Moon and Antarctica. That other album had a bit more sheen, a bit more polish on it, and it carried with it a distance that separated the listener from the performer. Here, we're getting close range screaming and singing, every lisped 's' an extra drop of saliva on our soon-to-be-drenched earlobes. And the best part? Like Beck, now that I've finally discovered this wonderful band, there's a tremendous backcatalogue of independent releases to hunt down and enjoy, not to mention a pile of singles from the recent major label efforts. Christmas is coming, which means a few presents in the form of gift certificates...can you guess what I'm going to spend them on?
Recommended for anyone with a predilection for the slightly bizarre.
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