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Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Sony
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Article
written by Bob M
Mar 16, 2007.
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| We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank |
If music is food, and top 40 pop music is lukewarm water with stale, over-salted, half-dissolved chicken broth powder, then Modest Mouse is steamy seafood gumbo (or for our Spanish friends, maybe a nice seafood paella). You’re never entirely sure what’s in it, but there’s a lot of ingredients; it’s complex and different each sitting; and, well, it’s usually damn good. Over the last few records, Modest Mouse has proven itself more than capable of assimilating and absorbing spices and techniques to produce something wholly new and flavourful. (And… metaphor stretched.)
Top off that normally intriguing and successful recipe with a new ingredient--namely former Smiths guitarist and legend Johnny Marr--and you either get a colossal train wreck or something equally exciting but substantially less painful. In this case, we get the latter.
The band often references the ocean, and it’s no surprise that this album opens with a slightly demented, throbbing sea chantey of sorts, “March into the Sea”, which while good, only seems a moderately entertaining aperitif for what is clearly the single of the year: “Dashboard”. One of the best tracks to come out in ages, it is leaps and bounds better than any single released in the last 6 months. It’s catchy as hell, utterly danceable, and sneaky in that way in which it gets under your skin and you find yourself humming it at the oddest moments, usually to alleviate skull-crushing boredom.
Amazingly, that’s only half the story. The album seem jammed with great Modest Mouse songs infused with a new voice and a fresh sense of place; it’s hard to not attribute that to Marr, but given the growth of Isaac Brock as a songwriter over the last three albums, much of it is a natural progression as well. “Fire It Up” will certainly be the stoner anthem of the year by summer (despite Brock claiming in an interview that the song is about tipping over cars or some such thing), and “We’ve Got Everything” is a gorgeous quintessential throwback to the best of ’80s new romantic-era rock that manages to not sound like a retro mess.
There’s a new breath of fresh air being infused into the normal Modest Mouse formula; ironically and appropriately, it’s coming from one of the architects and leaders of the sound the first time around. We can only hope that Marr’s permanent status as a band member is truly permanent, because it’s paying dividends thus far.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, indeed.
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