Isaac Brock is the deadbeat bum across the street wearing three jackets and an insane smile, dancing under the beating sun for quarters and warm beer, as the local kids point and jibe and ponder just how exactly a misshape like that gets a girlfriend. He’s also the intoxicating drifter gazed at adoringly by his girlfriend who can’t fathom why on earth those infuriating little shits across the way find him such an object of ridicule. This is a record of two tales, flip-sided personalities and blurred edges that bleed together into one almost coherent work of divine eccentricity. Modest Mouse for years existed on the fringes of American alternative indie, releasing records over here on Matador to quiet but spirited acclaim, carving their own little niche to the left of everybody else but generally dissipating with little consequence. This is where that all changes.
Take a look at the back cover for proof and behold the genuine shiny seal of a major label. Epic are quite clearly expecting Modest Mouse to blossom into this year’s Mercury Rev, and while that’s certainly not out of the question any direct comparisons are fairly fruitless. It’s not that ‘Good News For People Who Love Bad News’ doesn’t reference similar point’s to the ‘Rev’s breakthrough ‘Deserter’s Songs’, because it does. But the only way you could stand the latter next to the former and have a case of mistaken identity is if you dragged it through a mountain range backwards, drowned it in crystal meth, thwacked both its temples with a steak hammer and left it to settle under a meteor storm with a large glass of funny tasting bourbon and a cold flannel.
Things do sound bigger this time, more consistent, more levelled, like everything has been realised brilliantly, and without really compromising the vast chasms that exist between some of their ideas. And there was certainly no ‘Float On’ on their last record, that being the irresistible Dexy’s do Clinic melody-explosion that’s plastered all over MTV. There’s plenty more of that behaviour throughout, ‘The View’ giving Franz Ferdinand a run for their jaunty money for instance. But the record largely veers between the thrillingly unconventional Waits/Beefheart grittiness of ‘Dancehall’, Sat In A Coffin’ and ‘This Devil’s Workday’, and the comparative dreamy Americana of ‘Blame It On The Tetons’ and ‘One Chance’. The two are even mixed up to air-punching effect on ‘Black Cadillacs’. Most innovative mainstream album of the year? It’s worth throwing him a couple more quarters.
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