The cover art of Modest Mouse's fifth album is telling: a hot air balloon carrying an anchor. In forging their fifth full-length, Isaac Brock and company must have felt multiple weights hindering their musical ascent.
Pulling them from all sides were their low-fi fans, craving a return to basement recordings, desolate lyrics and trademark jam sessions to close out tracks; radio listeners, expecting another "Float On" to lift their spirits from early spring doldrums; and Epic Records likely hoping for another well-received and popular album to follow up the band's 2004 breakthrough, Good News for People Who Love Bad News.
None of these disparate factions will be completely thrilled with We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, the third major-label release of the Washington-born indie rock outfit. But none of them should be disappointed with it, either.
2004's Good News marked a major departure both musically and thematically from the band's previous work. The makeup of the band shifted, losing longtime drummer Jeremiah Green and adding Dann Gallucci as an extra guitarist. This, combined with new tendencies to mix in strange sound effects, vocal effects and filler tracks, made for a disjointed and odd album.
Three years later, the band we hear in We Were Dead has returned to something similar to its original configuration; original drummer Green returns and Good News guitarist Gallucci is absent. On the other hand, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has joined the band as a full-time member.
The album feels like a self-referential pastiche of the band's body of work, while managing not to seem tired or hackneyed. The single, "Dashboard," picks up lyrically where "Float On" left off three years ago. Brock croons "Well, the windshield was broken but I love the fresh air, you know." The temptation is to answer with an emphatic "Alright already!" The song has some complexity that its lyrics belie and that "Float On" lacked, however, culminating in quasi-ska fashion complete with mariachi horns.
Marr's influence and the occasional help of Shins frontman James Mercer manage a new but familiar take on Brock's lyrical and musical lineage. The alternately intense and dreamy "Florida" touches on the bleakness that permeated Modest Mouse's early work, with help from Mercer on backup vocals.
The album's emotional centerpiece, "Spitting Venom," builds up into a wild bending guitar riff combined with a long, wistful and distant outro reminiscent of Built to Spill. On tracks like these, Brock regains the snarl that marked some of his finest previous efforts.
The record is cohesive and tight, musically and thematically, with no blatantly weak tracks to single out. Both the band and the producers of the record seem more at ease with the stylistic elements that continue here from Good News; the horns, effects, and other foreign elements are this time well-integrated and don't seem like they were thrown in for their own sake.
One disappointment, however, is the handling of Green's drumming; it's as if the producers of the record forgot that Green was back with the band and kept the drums quiet and unobtrusive when Green's efforts formed the aggressive nucleus of much of the band's past work.
Modest Mouse's new release may not be thrilling to any one group of their fan base; but hopefully it will at least manage to remind all of their fans that Brock and company are still skilled at tying together musings on the nature of the universe, catchy hooks and unexpected musical directions into a cohesive and interesting album. Maybe that balloon can fly after all.
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