Modest Mouse - Good NewsFor People Who Love BadNews

Fri 18th Jun, 2004 in Music Reviews

After six albums and more than ten years of touring in the US, Modest Mouse have finally garnered an Australian release with their second major label effort Good News For People Who Like Bad News. It doesn’t take much of a listen to realise it was worth the wait. Quirky, guitar-based based indie pop, peppered with schizophrenic lyrics, is their weapon of choice. If forced to pick a similar artist, you’d probably end up likening them to Built to Spill, with a shade of Mercury Rev, but Modest Mouse’s music is truly unique. There is honestly nothing else out there like it.

Front man Isaac Brock has a rasp that only a mother could love, yet his unusual wail and impeccable sense of timing and pacing couldn’t suit the music it accompanies better. One moment he sounds calm, and occasionally profound, and the next he’s manically yammering like a wino with a captive audience, yet at no point does he sound like he’s reaching too far. Witness Float on or Bury Me With It, two of the more straightforward tracks on the albums that are carefully balanced with calm verses heightened by rabid verses.

Occasionally Isaac just goes off completely without a pause. Dance Hall is one of the most energetic tracks to pass through my sound system in a long time, but it’s quite mesmerising at the same time. The crazed, double tracked “I’m gonna Dance all Dance Hall every day” is guaranteed to pop into your head at the most inopportune moments.

Good News has it’s fair share of oddities, to the point that they’re hardly oddities within the context of the album. Bukowski is a surprisingly unpretentious social critique on the life of the acclaimed author Charles Bukowski, with a tune worthy of recognition in it’s own right. Blame it on the Tetons can best be described as a prog-pop masterwork that moves from a soft pop ballad to a kind of country meets Tori Amos instrumental. The Devil’s Workday could almost be described as a musical show tune, 1940s styled horns and all, were it sung by an intoxicated madman.

The Ocean Breathes Salty, The View and Black Cadillacs are more conventional in their approach, but the results are well above par. The stomping rhythm of Black Cadillacs is crying out for regular radio rotation, while The Ocean Breathes Salty has already made a mark on JJJ. The View has enough hooks in it to hold up a house full of curtains and.

The Flaming Lips guest on closer The Good Times are Killing Me, but without being told, you’d never know. It’s a good track, but it doesn’t stand out in any way differently to any other track on the album. I’m left wondering what the point was. Perhaps some name recognition to attract new fans? If so, given the simple sing-along nature of the song (sans Flaming Lips vocals, might I add), it hardly seems worth the effort. Wayne Coyne must have laughed all the way to the bank.

Modest Mouse have put together a winner with Good News For People Who Like Bad News, one that becomes more engaging with every subsequent listen. It’s not quite as strong a collection of songs as their previous album, The Moon and Antarctica, but makes for an excellent introduction to the band nonetheless. This may well be the album of the year for anyone who likes their music left of centre.