Jesse Hamer

A melancholy mood settles in as the lyrics sway into the music and back out into the heart leaving a black blanket of depression.

Listening to Modest Mouse’s new CD, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, tends to leave the listener in a lonely location within the recesses of the mind. Issac Brock, Eric Judy, Dann Gallucci and Benjamin Weikel make up the Seattle-based band. They’ve been around for quite a while, and have a few CDs besides Good News.

Interestingly the second song, “Float On,” is the only optimistic song on the CD and the one that gets the most radio play. So if people hear this song on the radio and like happy music they might not want to buy Good News, because the rest of the CD isn’t as peppy.

“Bury Me With It” just might be the most depressing Modest Mouse song to date. Brock sounds like he’s crying when he screams out, “Please bury me with it.” In the song he basically says that he hates his life and wants to die, but in a much more poetic and mournful way than most artists can do.

Modest Mouse questions life and picks a fight with God in “Bukowski.” The band questions the unfairness of life: “God takes life / He’s an Indian giver,” and points out the unavoidable evil within the world: “Evil me / Oh yea I know.”

Evil becomes the theme of the next song, “The Devil’s Workday.” Brock takes on the role of a little devil as he sings, “Gonna take this sack of puppies / Gonna set it out to freeze.”

“Blame It On The Tetons” points out just how hypocritical people are with lyrics like, “Wore our blank expressions / Burning with no one to put the fire out.”

“The Good Times Are Killing Me” might hit home for many people with lyrics like, “Have one / Have twenty ‘one mores’ and oh, it does not relent” and “We talked all night / But oh what the hell did we say?”

Modest Mouse really shakes it up by using lots of neat instruments including mellotron, ukulele, fiddle, organ and the banjo. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band provides the horns for the CD.

Good News For People Who Love Bad News isn’t the kind of CD everyone would love mostly because it’s very depressing, and the lyrics are hard to understand because they all mumble together.

#1.885629:2511509526.jpg:b_modestmouse.jpg:Modest Mouse lead singer Issac Brock with his band members. The group´s latest album is Good News for People who Love Bad News. :