A Week With Modest Mouse's "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank": Day 1
3 April 2007
tell your friends...
Words by Gabe Durham // Illustration by Collin David
“The yelp is efficient. The words, questions and statements that are encompassed in one quick yelp: How could you? How could you? I won’t believe it. Stop it now. Please stop it now. Oh God. Oh God. That poor man. Those poor women. Look at her arms. Look at his face. Those bastards. This is not how it should be. Goddamn all this. I give up. No, I will fight. No, I will give up. No, I will fight.“ – Dave Eggers, “ They Learned to Yelp”
That voice, that voice. We didn’t know how much we missed it till “Dashboard” showed up on Modest Mouse’s MySpace, and we’ve been making pilgrimages to the page ever since. And yeah, the song’s got a suspicious shine on it and we’re not sure what we think of the horns, but as Brock works up a sweat throughout the single, it’s that last line that sticks with us, that, “Could’ve been, would’ve been/Worse than you would ever know.” We believe him. Thematically, the song treads the same territory as “Float On,” but all that really means is that both are optimistic in adverse circumstances. This one’s got some torque, though. It’s an aggressive optimism. Anti-pessimism. Now we’ve got an album on our hands and we can put “Dashboard” in a context. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. A free-standing sentence, a tough album to get a feel for. The moods are more polarized on this one, lyrically and musically. The spare, straightforward “Little Motel,” “Fire It Up,” “People as Places as People” are tough to reconcile with the rabid “March Into the Sea,” “Steam Engenius,” “Invisible”. And the mouth-foaming Brock—the one who is less interested in floating on okay—gets the first and last word. Versatile as ever, Brock yelps, coos and roars all over this disc. Asserting his dominance, sublimating his pain, daring us to accuse him it’s an act. He lived alone in the upstairs of his house when his mom left his dad for his dad’s brother and later moved into a shack by his mom’s trailer. He’s been falsely accused of rape. His jaw was broken by a stranger. He’s done time for DUI/attempted murder charges (also false, at least the murder). Just this week, he cut himself twice across the chest while performing “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes.” None of this gives his art an ounce of extra credibility—it doesn’t need it anyway—but it gives his volatility some context. Did Eggers know he was talking about Isaac Brock when he described the shriek + whine + moan that is the yelp? Did he know it could be melodic? Few Americans under 40 have been dealt enough pain to release the sort of authentic yelp that appears at the end of “Parting of the Sensory” or the gravely roar at the beginning of “Fly Trapped in a Jar”. Like Max Fischer asking Herman Blume, “Were you in the shit?” we stare at Americans who have suffered with nervous virgin fascination. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.
I can’t find anything obnoxious about it. Seriously has blown me away.
it took me a few listens but it’s latched on and won’t let go. i hated it at first but now i can’t stop listening to it…
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i think this album is obnoxious, but has some good moments such as fire it up