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Album: Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Artist: Modest Mouse
Year: 2004
Genre: Ind... eh... alternative rock
Expectations: Medium to high

Before listening:

The Lonesome Crowded West is the only Modest Mouse album I've heard so far. I loved almost every song on it, and I hope that this one will be as good. But I have a feeling it won't. Seven years had gone, and that's enough time for both maturation and the loss of quality it sometimes brings, just like what happened to Green Day.

After listening:

The title is a perfect descriptor of the album's quality, in my opinion. It's like the band took all the elements I liked with The Lonesome Crowded West, and spat on them. The raw sound was polished to death while trying to keep the charm of the half-whiny vocals. Did that work? No. The songwriting smells of half-assedery (that's a word), and sometimes the songs are just plain annoying (see: "Dance Hall"). A few tracks that can pass as mediocre do not make up for all the fillers. I'm sure some hipsters might have been pleased when this came out, but the indie nerds surely facepalmed themselves to death. Excuse me, I'll just turn this off and put on The Lonesome Crowded West instead.


2/5

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