Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

I bought this at the Scotti's records store closing sale. I didn't listen to 90s Modest Mouse until I was in college, but I listened to '00s Modest Mouse from the moment I started listening to music independently. I think that "Dashboard" was one of the first indie rock songs that I ever heard, and I heard it on Shawn White Snowboarding: Road Trip. It was one of the first indie rock songs I learned how to play on the guitar. I still think it's brilliant. I've listened to more Johnny Marr as a Mouse than I have Johnny Marr as a Smith, largely thanks to that song.

A lot of you are cringing right now. Maybe you think that song and the faux-Victorian nauticalia marketing surrounding it signaled an inflection point where Isaac Brock discovered how to write normal songs. Maybe you were a happier person before I reminded you that ginger bitch Shawn White existed. Maybe you've just been steamrolled by fact that kids could have grown up with a song that you remember coming out when you still had cartilage in your knees.

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank isn't Modest Mouse's best album, but it is their last good full LP. There's plenty of wild swings like "Parting of the Sensory", a slowcore song about getting pressed into coal when you die that turns into a literal hoedown by the end. Has anyone mashed up Modest Mouse’s “March into the Sea” with Baroness’ “March into the Sea”? This is over an hour of music and Modest Mouse doesn't sag all that much over the runtime. While it's not always in-your-face and intense, there's always energy, and there's always intentionality. Nothing feels like it's not a Modest Mouse song, even the two songs with the Shins playing on them.

I get that it's at its' peak level of uncool right now, but fuck you, I'm nostalgic for this era of indie rock aesthetics. Sepia-toned papercraft just does something to me. The balloon logo should be just as iconic, if not more so, than the arrows on lime green. We'll see what shakes out when they do the inevitable 20th anniversary tour in 2027.

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse is a good album, and I like it.