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{ True Madness Magazine }
Music Reviews
Modest Mouse, Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Epic, 2004
By James Eddy
Four years after Modest Mouse’s bold statement The Moon and Antarctica, the boys of Modest Mouse return with something if a companion piece to that album with the somewhat eccentric and always exciting Good News For People Who Love Bad News. Long winded title aside, this is one of Mouse’s most adventurous outings to date and marks a new era for the always energetic band. After exploring their more somber side in TMA, Isaac Brock returns with an album that is as abrasive and confrontational as their debut and actually outshines that album by years as well. That doesn’t mean that they forgot everything they learned since then; the quirky folk feeling of Lonesome Crowded West, the introspective nature of TMA, and even the all out freakiness of The Fruit That Ate Itself are here with a little something extra. If anything, that’s the CDs one fault; so much is going on through out that it’s hard to keep track sometimes. “Blame it On the Tetons” is the most beautiful song the group has ever recorded, where as tracks like “Satin in the Coffin” and “Bury Me With It” seems to recall early Pixies. Freakout track “The Devil’s Workday” is downright creepy, while the album’s closer (“The Good Times Are Killing Me”) is about as close to normal as Mouse will ever get. That’s the thing about Good News that makes it so interesting, though; the fact that Modest Mouse is to the point as artists where they can make the absurd sound beautiful just as easily as the beautiful absurd. The sad news? Long time drummer and founding member of the band Jeremiah Green is absent from this record, the first Mouse album he’s missed, replaced by Benjamin Weikel. Though his absence is not really noticeable, it does mean that Modest Mouse is officially tied almost exclusively to being Isaac Brock’s project. Not that that really changes anything in the long run; it’s always been his ride from the start.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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