modest mouse by collin david

A Week With Modest Mouse's "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank": Day 4

12 April 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Gabe Durham // Illustration by Collin David

I’ve barely mentioned Johnny Marr, the Smiths’ guitarist who joined Modest Mouse for the We Were Dead sessions and co-wrote many of the album’s songs. I’d be interested to hear which songs have Marr’s mark on them because it’s not immediately obvious to those of us who were three years old when the Smiths broke up. The more I listen to We Were Dead, the more I find myself skipping around for the songs I’m not getting tired of. “Florida” is one. It’s one of the few songs that in no way feels like a throw-back to previous albums. The first part of “ Florida” could be the theme song to an 80’s cop show if not offset by the vocals. Eventually, the rabid voice wins and the instruments fall in line, stomping in to the song’s conclusion: “I could have my mind erased/And still not know exactly what I don’t already know”. A lot of great ideas are compressed into this 3-minute pop song and somehow it all works.

“People as Places as People,” too, has staying power. The only song on this album that could have been at home on The Moon and Antarctica, “People” puts Brock in the role of the lonely drifter once again. “Bark at the neighbors /And then bark at the door/Snifflin’ and wimperin’/For someone to know/But we were the people that we wanted to know/And we’re the places that we wanted go.” As Modest Mouse gets older, they find themselves discouraged with wanderlust and hungry for home. Perhaps as a result, the inclusive “we” is all over the album. Brock uses the sometimes-ambiguous pronoun to pull others into his lyrics, whether it stands in for the band (“The dashboard melted but we still have the radio”), Brock and a lover (“When we find the perfect water/We’ll hang out on the shore/Just long enough to leave our clothes there”) or humanity (“Well we all just got caught looking/At somebody else’s page”). Maybe Brock has found a greater sense of community and a will to stick with the people who matter to him. Or maybe he’s just happy to have a new writing buddy.

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