Modest Mouse remains focused on latest album

The only thing that has really changed is the band’s accessibility to the mainstream.

By JOHN BENSON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

Being focused may not be how Modest Mouse singer-guitarist Isaac Brock lives his life; however, when it came time for his Pacific Northwest band to record its latest effort, “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,” that appears to be exactly what the outfit was hoping to accomplish.

“Man, I’m not focused in my life,” said Brock, calling from his Washington home. “Musically, whether this album was more focused, for me … I guess we did focus on this a lot more than in the past. This isn’t something where we were going to let anything fall between the cracks, sonically or otherwise. I think this is probably the hardest we ever worked on a record.”

He added, “I suppose it was one of the things that we wanted to do was make a really interesting record that didn’t waste a lot of time with things that were unnecessary. Like I wouldn’t have any song be long if it seemed like it wasn’t helping the record. In the past we had 13-minute-long songs — like ‘Truckers Atlas’ [from 1997’s “Lonesome Crowded West”] — and after a while it’s not really accomplishing anything. So this time I wanted to make sure that I kept it good and weird, but I didn’t get off track.”

Follow-up album

The highly anticipated follow-up to 2004’s “Good News For People Who Love Bad News,” which featured the band’s first mainstream hit single, “Float On,” the new 14-track effort finally matches Brock’s vocal eccentricities with the group’s potent musical output. Highlights include the alluring “People as Places as People” and the epic “Spitting Venom,” which includes a guitar-jam coda that is truly something special.

“The thing is, when you have six people all trying to play at the same time, you end up having to be extra clear with what you’re doing, and you really need to focus on what it is you’re doing,” Brock said. “Like if I have a part, I had to make sure it was fitting within [the band’s performance] really well and not stepping on anyone when they were trying to play and vice-versa. Just based on that, you have to be a bit more focused with it.”

The other change of note concerning Modest Mouse and “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank” has to do with a new band member. Initially approached to help the band write and record for the album, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr eventually was asked to join the group on a full-time basis.

However, his presence is hardly discernible, with the band’s same Talking Heads influence and indie rock aesthetic, the identical vibe that transformed the group from a critically acclaimed yet somewhat obscure ’90s act into a new millennium major label outfit, still readily apparent.

Album during transition

In fact, the only thing that has truly changed for the band over the past few years is its accessibility to the mainstream. There’s no doubt that “Good News For People Who Love Bad News” was more listener-friendly than past efforts. This is somewhat odd considering the album was recorded in a time of transition for Modest Mouse, with the departure of drummer Jeremiah Green.

“Because of the nature on how poorly things had gone in trying to write it in the first place, we basically scrapped most of what we had, which we didn’t have much, salvaged some of it and wrote the whole record in a month,” Brock said. “Basically what we wanted to do was once we decided we’d continue to do the band, which was actually a discussion we had and we were pretty positive we were getting dropped by the label, we were kind of at the point of like [expletive] it, we’ll make the record anyways.

“Even though I didn’t really think the record was getting released, I just wanted to make sure when it didn’t, I’d done the best we [expletive] could.”

Considering such turmoil (Green is now back in the band), is Brock surprised Modest Mouse is not only still together but going strong today?

“No, I’m not all that surprised,” Brock said. “We never really quit, no matter how [expletive] things had gotten.”

And that’s good news for people who love Modest Mouse.