Alienation is nothing new for Isaac Brock. Modest Mouse have made a steady racket out of the singer's isolation and misanthropy. But the band's breakout success, Good News for People Who Love Bad News , was a relatively friendly pop record, and longtime fans must have wondered if it represented a new course for the band or merely a momentary deviation. Musically, We Were Dead contains much the same beauty and dirt that the band perfected on that breakout record, only in a different ratio.
Tinkling xylophones, airy synth pads, and shiny brass all appear, but they don't subdue Brock's ragged howls and discordant guitar as they once did.
Much has been made of legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr's joining the band less so of new sidemen Tom Peloso and Joe Plummer , but his guitar work doesn't drastically stand out against Modest Mouse's well-established sound. A more immediately recognizable contribution comes from the Shins' James Mercer, whose agile harmonies appear on the soaring but failed escape fantasy of "Florida," the weary conversation of "Missed the Boat," and the defeatist stomp of "We've Got Everything.
Failure, or more accurately futility, is an unsurprising lyrical theme throughout, with Good News 's delicately floated optimism replaced by deflated dread. Rather than an easy retread of their last record's graceful balance, We Were Dead is stubbornly off-kilter, occasionally difficult, and frequently rewardingβin other words, a classic Modest Mouse record. Since their astonishingly beautiful album, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons , and continuing with 's Misery Is a Butterfly , Blonde Redhead have taken a path of increasing critical and commercial standing and of concerted self-refinement.
Their third album of this decade, 23 , finds them further crystallizing their highly personal, highly dramatic baroque pop.
