Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse
No One’s First and You’re Next
(Epic, 2009)

Isaac Brock’s band of transients, fuck-ups, and—at one point—an ex-Smiths guitarist take their sweet-ass time like most other million-sellers and usually bring 14-plus tracks with them, sometimes sending their LPs past an hour, which proved relatively fatal to 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Sank. Similar to releasing Nellie McKay’s spry Obligatory Villagers (brilliant, 31 minutes) as an olive branch for Pretty Little Head (suffocating, 64 minutes), here is half a Modest Mouse album’s worth of unreleased tracks and b-sides from two past records—one landmark (2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News) and one hit-or-miss (2007’s We Were Dead…)—released as singles in their own right on vinyl, that can swim on their damn own.

The first half of No One’s First and You’re Next is bent on proving that Brock’s guitar band instincts never left, with the excellent “The Whale Song” making mincemeat of its six minutes via a lasering Jack White-style guitar finish, and opener “Satellite Skin” standing as the band’s simplest pop song after “Float On”, with clean, blocky chords and structure with such a surefire pro vibe it feels almost Nashvillian. “Guilty Cocker Spaniels” is exactly the kind of title Brock should be writing to, picking up where Archers of Loaf’s Eric Bachmann left off with his man-vs.-animal morality plays—a theme explored even more literally in the graphic, Heath Ledger-directed cartoon for “King Rat.” “Autumn Beds” was probably plunked out on banjo about the same time as 2004’s seminal “Bukowski”, sharing the same instrumentation and tumbling rhythm, arpeggios falling out in front of it like sprockets from an old watch. Few songs with such mournful pedal steel are so hooky, even if it’s a fuck-you-August chant like “we won’t be sleeping in our autumn beds.”

In the second half, Brock continues to warm Tom Waits’ lunch with the brass-bedded “Perpetual Motion Machine” and “King Rat”, which are looser and swampier than anything on Good News for People Who Love Bad News.Atthis level of casual tunefulness, he may be almost ready for a guest shot in a Scorcese blues doc beside Common or something. And with such a ramshackle feel, these outtakes come together with surprisingly consistent production resembling a whole release. And the band tries so much harder than necessary, kicking the centerpiece “King Rat” into high gear with double-time bluegrass-meets-swing, without sacrificing a flake of guitar-act jaunt and jostle. Maybe they’re on a major because they always try harder than necessary, no matter how reluctant Brock wants you to think he is to care about the square root of fuck. But the chief importance and secret to Brock’s success are the subtle hints he drops in that he’s just kidding about that whole no-tomorrow thing: “We all try harder as the days run out.” After all, he’s a perpetual motion machine.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Tags: Modest Mouse, No One’s First and You’re Next, Isaac Brock