yeah...a friend put it on a cd for me...after i heard it i downloaded a few others...nothing stood out.
i only have the moon and good news...picked them up after I saw them on austin city limits.
It's funny, T_ _ _ really likes the first song on good news...that's when I know it's getting too poppy.
and not the good types of poppy
the kind that make you visit the land of nod....
we have some kids catalog, the land of nod...guess it's a kids furniture store...let me tell you...that's not what the land of nod looks like...maybe the trip to the land of nod....but the actual land of nod isn't so pretty.
Really? The horn intro drives me up the wall. Hell on headphones.
Actually, the first 'song' on Good News, "World at Large" is one of the best of their last two albums. Ignoring the fact that "Float On" was a massive hit and pretty much ruined their fan base at shows, I really loved it when I first heard it (keep in mind that this album was the album I was listening to when I finally kicked alcohol and Brock, who I find to be, if you pardon the most embarrassing cliche, "speaking directly to me" (really, he seems to be describing my exact feelings in almost every song - I was really in the right mood to hear positive words from him). "Ocean Breathes Salty" is another favourite of what may turn out to be my final favourites. I'm right there with them on the return to angry "Bury Me With It", but then the Tom Waits-aping of "Dance Hall" comes in and throws me off entirely. The pacing/production of the album is atrocious. It comes out of the gates doing quite well without the key rhythms of Jeremiah Green and then slams into the wall of Ugly Casanova (Isaac Brock solo/with Califone - more or less) - styled tunes that just do not fit. "Bukowski" hits me on many levels (esp. confirming what I suspected, that his lyrics were influenced by my favourite poet), but lumped in with "Dance Hall" and "The Devil's Workday" it just feels lost. Then it is followed by the fun-ever-so-slightly-disco-punk "The View" and the "Satin In A Coffin". Those songs and "Blame It On The Tetons" ended up being entirely indicative of where Brock was starting to head as a songwriter, as most of "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank" sounds pretty much exactly like those songs, only even weaker. They feel like half-developed throwaways and "Black Cadillacs" is just fucking terrible. "One Chance" and "The Good Times Are Killing Me" come in and somewhat redeem a completely unbalanced album.
Basically you have an album of fragments:
Superfluous tracks that are not songs:
01. Horn Intro (irritating as fucking anything I have ever heard open an album)
05. Dig Your Grave (actually not superfluous at all, it really fits 'tween "Ocean" and "Bury" - the death songs)
12. Interlude (Milo) (not the first time I have heard someone inject their baby's baby talk into an album)
Strong songs which sound far too much like commercial singles to be lumped together at the opening (love the lyrics of all four):
02. The World At Large
03. Float On (single one)
04. Ocean Breathes Salty (single two)
06. Bury Me With It
Songs that sound like leftovers from Ugly Casanova:
07. Dance Hall
08. Bukowski
09. Devil's Workday
11. Satin In A Coffin
The new 'light' Modest Mouse sound to be repeated on "We Were...":
10. The View (okay)
13. Blame It On The Tetons (not awful)
14. Black Cadillacs (awful)
15. One Chance (excellent)
16. The Good Times Are Killing Me (excellent)
I cannot help but think someone lumped these together like this deliberately. Obviously the track listing was deliberate, but I believe someone noted the similarity of sound as well and thought it was ideal to lump them instead of balance them.
This is why I almost always stop listening when "Dance Hall" comes on...it ruins the high of "Bury Me..."
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