We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Performer: Modest Mouse
Engineer: Clay Jones; Joe Zook; Kyle 'Slick' Johnson; Tom Queyja; Reto Peter; Clay Jones; Joe Zook
Producer: Dennis Herring; Dennis Herring
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Modest Mouse: Eric Judy, Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green, Johnny Marr , Joe Plummer, Tom Peloso. Personnel: Clay Jones (acoustic guitar, shaker, programming); Dennis Herring (Fender Rhodes piano, pump organ, background vocals); Kyle "Slick" Johnson (programming); Naheed Simjee, James Mercer (background vocals). Audio Mixers: Dennis Herring; Joe Zook. Recording information: Audible Alchemy, Portland, OR; Sweet Tea, Oxford, MS. Illustrators: David Ellis; Casey Burns. Though the album title sounds like it was borrowed from the avant-weirdos Liars, WE WERE DEAD BEFORE THE SHIP EVEN SANK finds quintessential indie-rockers Modest Mouse charting a course down the stylistic middle. They retain enough of their trademark quirkiness to keep longtime fans from feeling alienated, but they simultaneously put popwise songcraft to the fore. The dance-rock of "Dashboard" sounds like it could be a Killers outtake, and several tracks find the band engaging in the kind of post-Pavement mid-fi style that first endeared them to the slacker masses. Isaac Brock sounds properly unhinged on "Florida," "Invisible," and "Steam Engenius," as the band pushes into overdrive, but there's also a brace of low-key, acoustic-based tunes that provide a perfect contrast. The Mouse is bolstered by some high-powered guests as well: Smiths guitar legend Johnny Marr adds a bit of six-string support, and Shins singer James Mercer contributes some backing vocals. Nevertheless, the fraying-but-fierce group dynamic that's always been at the heart of the MM sound prevails throughout. Now that Modest Mouse have fully established themselves as a major-label indie rock band -- no longer an oxymoron! -- with the success of 2004's Good News for People Who Love Bad News (though they had actually been on Sony, through Epic, since 2000's The Moon & Antarctica), they face the difficult task of trying to follow up a mainstream hit while still retaining the adroit quirkiness that won them fans in the first place. Finding that space between "creativity" and "accessibility" is not easy, but the band (with help from Johnny Marr, among others) is probably as well, if not better, equipped as anyone to tackle the challenge. The first single, "Dashboard," is catchy and interesting, even a little off-kilter, but it's also completely radio-friendly, in that dancey Franz Ferdinand kind of way, and the album's opener, "March into the Sea," has great juxtaposition between Isaac Brock's maniacal Cookie Monster laugh and lighter accordion and string work. It's slightly unconventional, and has that raucous energy the band has thrived on, but it's also wholly understandable and approachable, and a lot of fun. Still, too often it seems as if Modest Mouse plays it safe on We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. James Mercer, the singer of the "life-changing" Garden State darlings the Shins, shows up three times on background vocals, and while on "Florida" this works well enough, "Missed the Boat" and "We've Got Everything" are among the weakest tracks on the record, too predictable, in that radio-indie-rock style, to do much more than just take up space. There's nothing overtly wrong with them (or the similarly boring "Education" or "People as Places as People") -- Brock's lyrics are as wackily introspective as ever -- but the band had never just gotten by on being nice-sounding and unmemorable. It's not that Modest Mouse has lost it, or sold out; tracks like "Parting of the Sensory" and "Fly Trapped in a Jar" combine digestible guitar lines and phrasing with a rawer intensity, and show that the group is indeed capable of moving innovate "indie" music to the mainstream ("someday you will die somehow and something's gonna steal your carbon," Brock sings ingeniously over pounding, swirling drums in a kind of post-modern chant in "Parting"), but overall, We Were Dead Before... has chosen the safer, more acceptable route over the more adventurous one. Modest Mouse is a talented bunch, and so the album still works, is still enjoyable. But because they've built themselves on pushing boundaries and traditional sounds, it's also a glaring representation of all they could do, but won't. ~ Marisa Brown

Rolling Stone (p.78) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's louder and somewhat less twisty than the group's indie output..." Spin (p.85) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Brock's pop instincts have never been more refined....It's a road-trip sing-along album not for vacationers, but for escapees." Entertainment Weekly (p.58) - "Brock has never sounded more charismatic, or chameleonlike, as he alternately croons, spits, and bronchially howls through lyrics..." -- Grade: A- Q (p.128) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Marr dazzles throughout....Modest Mouse show no signs of sinking into the quagmire of mainstream orthodoxy...A fantastic voyage." Alternative Press (p.145) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Brock and his bandmates have filled the album with the kind of guitar-heavy dirges and poignant ballads that long ago turned them into blue-collar indie-rock gods." Q (Magazine) (p.87) - Ranked #11 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2007" -- "[L]oosely based around a nautical theme, it conjures up visions of a grunge Talking Heads..." Mojo (Publisher) (p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Isaac Brock's vocal histrionics and Marr's itchy guitar scrawl provide a backdrop for cryptic, neurotic lyrical intrigue, but they're also capable of a cute romantic ballad..."

Combining the influences of new wave, post-punk, and lo-fi, Washington's Modest Mouse spent the second half of the 1990s becoming one of the most renowned indie-rock bands in America. Though often tagged an emo group, Modest Mouse transcends sub-genre categorization. Their moody arrangements, inventive lyrics, and distinctly modern variation on the power-trio format set them apart even as the band's sound proved influential to subsequent hordes of emo bands and indie rockers. They're one of the few indie groups to have successfully weathered the jump to a major label with both their sound and audience intact.

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