I owe a lot to Modest Mouse. It was after a friend forced me to listen to “Lonesome Crowded West” in high school that I stopped listening to what was on the radio and actively started to search for more fulfilling sources of music. I bought the album the next day and listened to it obsessively for the next six months.
I’ve had several friendships begin with a conversation about the band’s music, which had an ironic way of helping people who felt unable to connect to modern society connect with each other.
In short, no other band played as integral a role in my late teens as Modest Mouse did. That’s why I approached the April 6 release of “Good News For People Who Love Bad News” with great trepidation. After waiting four years to follow-up their last full-length release of new material and losing founding member and drummer Jeremiah Green, I doubted the new album would be able to live up to the high standard my sentimentality had placed on the band’s work.
Thankfully, the long-delayed “Good News For People Who Love Bad News” is an excellent album, but at the same time it abandons much of the band’s signature sound and fails to reach the same intensity of previous albums.
Instead of sounding like a Modest Mouse album, the new release sounds like a zydeco-inspired collection of songs written for singer/guitarist Isaac Brock’s solo project Ugly Casanova. Brock’s concern seems to have shifted from exorcising his demons to refining his craft.
The album is in the same vein as their last major release, 2000’s “The Moon & Antarctica.” Like that album, this one has shorter songs and more layers than their earliest work. The first single from the record, “Float On,” bounces along like the catchy “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” but without the cynicism. Instead of conjuring up apocalyptic visions of gray dust, Brock sings “We’ll all float on OK, don’t worry … good news is on the way.”
Other stand-out tracks include “The World At Large,” “Ocean Breathes Salty” and “The View.” All are delivered almost flawlessly and will certainly receive significant air time on college radio stations. The end of “Ocean Breathes Salty” showcases the work of new drummer Benjamin Wiekel (of Beaverton’s The Helio Sequence), and proves he can fill Green’s shoes.
Missing from the new album is the winding and pounding interplay between Brock’s guitar and Eric Judy’s bass that carried earlier songs like “Doin’ The Cockroach” and exploded in “Tundra/Desert.”
It could be argued the new sound is due to Brock’s progress as a songwriter. But for a band whose music has consistently lamented the open space progress destroys, is this a good thing?
“Good News For People Who Love Bad News” was released Tuesday and is available at record stores everywhere.