Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (2007)

1) March into the Sea; 2) Dashboard; 3) Fire It Up; 4) Florida; 5) Parting of the Sensory; 6) Missed the Boat; 7) We’ve Got Everything; 8) Fly Trapped in a Jar; 9) Education; 10) Little Motel; 11) Steam Engenius; 12) Spitting Venom; 13) People as Places as People; 14) Invisible

Modest Mouse prove that they can lay proper focus on song craft with a semi-concept album, and that they can pull it off without losing any of their manic energy. Johnny Marr inexplicably guest stars.

Key tracks: "Dashboard", "Missed the Boat", "Fly Trapped in a Jar"

Modest Mouse circa We Were Dead Before the Ship even Sank were going through a lot of changes. Their major label debut Good News for People Who Love Bad News had been a surprise hit, and the success had suddenly opened the way to big-time recording studios and bigger budgets to record with. Coincidentally the band’s vision of their music had started to change as well, though not towards the much-feared mainstreamification some assumed. The tried and tested trio setup had ran its course in the band’s head and while Good News had already turned the frequent helping hand Dan Gallucci into a stable part of the group, their new ambitions paved way for a further expanded approach and a more layered sound. The stage line-up had doubled in size to accommodate this new vision and to bring it to life on in concerts, and suddenly the band was officially filled with multi-instrumentalists and helping hands. Good News might feel like the easy border between the old and new incarnations of Modest Mouse but it has a lot more common with its older siblings than most give it credit for: We Were Dead reinvented the band, both in sound and as a group of people.

Isaac Brock’s songwriting, too, was going through changes. It had been growing more nuanced for a while but Brock started the We Were Dead sessions like he had something to prove. It was originally a concept album: one by one, song by song, the crew of an unlucky ship would die until there would be no one left. The concept was eventually scrapped and only traces of it remain in the finished album in a confusing manner where shared characters appear as frequently as they are forgotten, but the fact that Brock & Co were even plotting an honest-to-god focused story that ties every song together instead of simply using general overarching themes is already telling of the change in the band’s ways. Modest Mouse are a not a group that do cohesion and careful organisation, after all: their songs are always on the verge of unravelling and it’s never too long until they do, the albums are long and rambling 70-minute slabs of erratic twists and turns and Brock can switch from soft and emotional to rabid yelping and barking in a flash, accentuated by his equally messy guitar style. Here though, there’s clarity and focus, and even with the concept gone the songs sound like they were carefully thought over and composed. This shift in tone was further aided by the rather random appearance of Johnny Marr, who had casually decided to tag along full-time after a few informal sessions together. He didn’t bring much of a direct musical influence with him (his guitar parts for most parts sound like his reinterpretation of Brock’s style, rather than uniquely his own) but his decades of experience and a more refined songwriting style likely rubbed off onto Brock.

The red line running through We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is that Brock’s talent as a songwriter is constantly being highlighted. Sure, it was clear before that the band wrote good songs - the previous albums are full of them - but Modest Mouse have only rarely come across as a group with a real, determined focus on crafting a song. Usually they just channel their manic energy through their instruments and magic happens in the process, but We Were Dead approaches the process from a different angle: this time it feels like Brock and the band actually sat down to think of all the nuances in writing a song and how to make each second count. The concept album angle is a slightly over the top logical conclusion of that path but even when that was dropped, Brock kept focusing on the melodies, the arrangements and the structures. That’s how we’ve ended up with songs like “Little Motel”, “Fire It Up” or “Missed the Boat”, which would have been unreal on any previous album. They’re intricate, beautiful compositions that are a natural yet long-missed evolution of back catalogue favourites like “3rd Planet” or “The World at Large”, where the band’s tight interplay is used to create something genuinely lovely. “Missed the Boat” in particular is quite a thing – its verses keep shifting shape, the chorus soars like it’s the most effortless, weightless thing there is (with The Shins’ James Mercer making one of his three very audible contributions here) and Marr flourishes the song with his most Smiths-esque riffs in the album, all coming together to form a song that sounds so small and down to earth yet still so impactful and impressive. The token long track “Spitting Venom” is similarly empowered by the new approach: where the past songs of extended length brought on the minutes through sticking to particular grooves and intense jamming, “Spitting Venom” evolves its arrangement as its initial tight rock-out seamlessly transforms into the horn-accentuated, mammoth finale, constantly adding and dropping details so it never feels like it’s repeating itself.

We Were Dead switches between these new sweeter cuts and the usual Mouse-esque franticness and off-kilter rock throughout the album, just to squash any worries that there’s no more fire in the band’s belly. In fact, that’s actually where most of the album’s best moments come from: the whimsical yelper pop of “We’ve Got Everything” and “Steam Engenius”, the gloriously demented neuro-rocker “Fly Trapped in a Jar” and the more polished energy rush of “Florida” are as smart, frantic and exciting as the band’s ever done. The hit single “Dashboard” answers the questions of whether the band could follow up on the success of “Float On” (yes) and if they could pull it off even better (yes) - with its inspired double drum tracks, horn punctuations, quirky backing vocals and rapid fire chorus spit, it’s a song that’s both instantly enjoyable as well as bizarre enough to make you wonder how it became a radio staple. Like all Modest Mouse albums We Were Dead feels slightly overlong but this time there’s no obvious tracks to cut - no interludes, no novelty moments, no overrunning sketches. Regardless of their nature each song is fleshed out fully and wrapped tight, running exactly as long as they need to and yet long enough to develop all those brilliant arrangements and melodies to their richest. The only tracklist complaint I’ve got is that “Invisible” cuts the album off rather abruptly, but it’s hard to fault the song for it - it’s a great, muscular power punch, even if it’s an awkward closer. It’s an imperfection but hardly a deal breaker, and there’s something very typically Modest Mouse-like in such an ending.

Which, I guess, works perfectly as a reminder that it’s still Modest Mouse despite all, because flipping back and forth between the previous albums and this the change is so stark. The six-piece on We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is obviously operating way differently to the lo-fi teen angst and fury that the band made their name with and the change is stark enough that you could be justified in calling this a brand new second incarnation of the band, the start of a whole new book rather than just a chapter. I love the rawness of the earlier albums as much as anyone, but focusing on that is kind of missing the point. Everything presented on this album has reared its head here and there throughout the band’s works and now Brock’s finally decided to bring it out in full force while having the means to do it - it’s making an occasionally teased promise actually realise in full glory. That’s why it’s not really turning the back on the old sound when We Were Dead turns out to be their best album - it shines the light on the building blocks that have always contributed to their music being great but which never got the center stage before.

Rating: 9/10