kriminalelement said:

I loved "The Moon and Antartica" when I was a kid, but hated everything after "Good News for People who Love Bad News." They became maudlin and sentimental with this album and Isaac Brock's reported use of Prozac. They also had a new record deal, which I think put pressure on the lead songwriters to produce marketable stuff.

There are those who argue that just because it's "marketable" doesn't mean it's "bad", but I hate to see an original and innovative musical group give into what everyone expects of them and produce music that sounds like all their other music (only moreso). There comes a point when a band just runs out of ideas and focuses on selling albums or creating a certain hyper-conventionalized sound.

Something that bothered me about Modest Mouse after about 2004 was a loss of rage and an insistence on harmony rather than dissonance. There are other indie rock bands that have traversed the seas of emo teenage emotions and gone back to childhood in a poetically and musically sound way. For example, The Arcade Fire made that transition beautifully. I think Modest Mouse saw some artistic (or probably commercial) benefit to imitating this style and didn't do it quite as well. Either way, after 2004 the indie scene was flooded with bands that were much more daring, innovative, and original than the drivel Modest Mouse has continued to sell to the teenybopper crowd.

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What are you a TELEPATH!?

spooOOO^ooky.



I still have most of the early Modest Mouse on rotation in my musical maker, and Ugly Casanova will always hold a special place in my heart, and in my record collection.