Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Modest Mouse's fifth album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, originated as a concept: Isaac Brock had the idea to write every song about sailors that die in every song, like Kenny from South Park. He couldn't actually keep it up for an entire album, but the core idea is definitely there.
Aside: i'm really not as fascinated with death as my humor and record collection make it seem. You're going to laugh, but i am actually an extreme life loving optimist on the inside.
But, Modest Mouse. They are idie rock, or alternative, or even art rock, but most of all they are anti-facade, exactly like the meat puppets. It's ridiculous, or pretentious, or insane, or sarcastic, but it's not an act. They are who they are, and no one has the power to change that. You can't argue one way or the other about them to any avail, and that is as post-punk as it gets. No, i tell a lie. It would be even better if another seriously big post punk musician joined them for this album. Waaiiit. That's Johnny Marr. From the Smiths. I stand corrected on my correction of myself. This is as post-punk as it gets.
So on to the music. This album, in Isaac's own words is "a nautical balalaika carnival romp." That's a loaded description though, you have to have a clear picture of carnivals as deranged, frightening, intrinsically ironic social events, like i and most of my generation do.
I might be crazy, but i think their music is much more counterpoint oriented than rock of any type. Listening to Modest Mouse, you get the sense that you can either bash the guitar with your fist or plink out meanderingly off-kilter melodies, and never the twain shall meet. Vocals are melodic, but the pitches involved have a weighted value of 0.003 (very nearly Sprechstimme to my ears). Loud or soft. Whisper or yell. No shades of gray, period. I like that quite a lot, to be honest. Solos start off completely tonal, then a sour note crops up and they veer off into crazy dissonant intelligibility. It's an i'm not ok, pick a path and walk down it because neither is better mentality, and that's a system everyone can work with. Either you love it or you don't, and we don't have to agree at all.
Would it even surprise you at all that his house is filled to the brim with bizarre taxidermied animals that he bought because it was an insane thing to collect?
We should talk about format. By the 2000s, albums had become monstrously behemoth hour plus affairs (80 minutes on a CD, after all). So, if you're retro and publish vinyl too, they end up being double albums. Thankfully, these lunatics take that into consideration, and We Were Dead... is actually the second half. The first half is subtitled We Were Lucky... and that's perfect. 4 songs, 3 songs, 4 songs, 3 songs. I find Modest Mouse vinyl muchly much much more satisfying than the seemingly endless tracklist of CD or digital formats. And the packaging and vinyl itself is thick and sturdy, and real; it matters. It's for people who love it to love it, not impulse junk just to make a dollar. You might be tempted to say "but bottle, Epic is a Sony label." Yes, but 5th album, and they had just found the mainstream with the previous two. It sold 128,585 in the first week after it had already been leaked online, reached platinum (a million copies) a few months later, and that wasn't a shock. A major HAD to release it; who else could afford to pay for it up front? What lunatic would only publish a single run and make fans wait to get a copy? This wasn't a case of "manufacturing" an act, they were exactly the right band at exactly the right time and the whole industry just stood out of the way and said "thank you" afterward.
I wish i had more than two of their albums, but we'll listen to their debut later this week. Maybe i'll use a tiny portion of my $1,000 RepubliCratic severance check to buy a couple more (ha!)
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Let it all drop, indeed. I love Modest Mouse in case you couldn't tell.
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