Modest Mouse maintains quality with recent surge of fame

For all the speculation surrounding it, "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank" might as well have been Modest Mouse's sophomore release rather than its seventh full-length studio album. Critics and fans alike had reason to be wary of this latest LP, coming three years after the success of "Good News For People Who Love Bad News." After reaching the upper echelons of the Billboard charts and scoring prominent radio and television play (thanks Seth Cohen!) with hits like "Float On" in 2004, Modest Mouse needed to tread carefully between remaining accessible to legions of new listeners while still retaining that off-kilter sensibility that endeared the band to diehard fans in the '90s, lest the choir shout "Sell outs!" for yet another successful indie band.

Modest Mouse has marched on without looking back, confidently making its sound harder and writing with a wit and literacy that shows the many years of experience under the band members' belts. "We Were Dead" doesn't reinvent the wheel, but does it need to? The album will satisfy fans of all degrees of hipness -- there's enough nuance to translate into pretentious arguments about rock, but still enough catchy hooks to drive you to dance, or at least nod your head.

Even after more than a decade together, the members of Modest Mouse manage to bring something new to the table. Singer/guitarist Isaac Brock has one of the most unique artistic voices on the radio today, which he exhibits both in songwriting and his vocal style. He can move from an aggressive bark to a reflective croon at the drop of a hat. The transitions are rarely seamless; they're abrupt, but they never feel too jarring to work. Brock's voice is a tool the band truly exploits, using it to modulate between song sections rather than actually changing keys. If used carelessly, exploiting such a range of sound could make for quite the schizophrenic album, but the solid backing provided by Eric Judy on bass and Jeremiah Green on drums gives "We Were Dead" a consistent sound that Brock only offers with his consistently catchy guitar licks.

Brock's lyrics, if you can make them out amid the yelps, are equally laudable. Many of the songs have the same morbid outlook that the album title suggests -- death and less fatal forms of escape are popular subjects -- but these macabre themes never weigh the album down. Some songs are even allowed to be a little optimistic. Story plots, if extant, are pleasantly vague -- I couldn't tell you what exactly all of these songs were about, but nothing pleases me more than to hear an artist turn a phrase like "Oh we ate all of the oranges off the navels of our lovers," as Brock does in "Fire It Up." His lyrics are more like run-on sentences than lines, twisting words and images that read beautifully on paper and are taken one step further when sung in that distinctive voice. That said, I often find myself categorizing songs in terms of which voice Brock uses. Growling versus singing, yells versus lullabies -- each is so distinctive that when repeated for more than one song, they can run together aurally.

On "We Were Dead," Modest Mouse isn't too proud to look to other musicians to further enhance the album. Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and Shins frontman James Mercer breathe fresh air into the songwriting and vocals, respectively.

Mercer's falsetto, so often a highlight of the Shins' own quirky pop, provides an intriguing and strangely satisfying counterpoint to Brock's yells and growls. This contribution brings each of the tracks it's on to a whole new level, most notably in "We've Got Everything," where Mercer's cries answer to Brock's call. If I had to pick a hit from the album, this anthem of tragic overconfidence would be it.

Marr's contributions are no less substantial, yet thankfully they're less obvious. Too often in songwriting and production, celebrity contributors overwhelm the tracks rather than enhance them, turning each into a clone of their previous work rather than taking the current project in a new direction. So when I heard about Marr's involvement with the album, I envisioned a less homoerotic answer to Morrissey's solo career as a worst-case scenario. However, Brock and company have been around long enough to hold their own; like Morrissey, Brock has unique and flexible vocal stylings of his own, but the references to the Smiths and the '80s are kept to a minimum. Only the wailing guitar that underlies end track "Invisible" clearly harkens back to Marr's past.

Instead, Marr's hand shows in the successful "funk-punk" melodies that repeatedly and suddenly rise up in the middle of a song. Overall, the '80s-influenced flourishes reminded me more of the Talking Heads than the Smiths, especially in production choices like "Dashboard's" prominent brass component or the bass line of "Education." However, the Generation-Y ennui that pervades most of the songs could only be of a post-grunge moment --this is not a throwback album but a product of this millennium and of the band's decade-long evolution. And like the banner-carrying grunge group Nirvana, Modest Mouse is successfully making the leap to mainstream without compromising much of its artistic integrity. However, unlike that ill-fated band and despite Modest Mouse's predilection for a smartly gloomy album title, Brock seems to be able to carry the burden of pleasing critics, fans and label accountants alike with poise and musicality.