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We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank | Modest Mouse
Epic | March 17th

Review by Tom Fairman

Website | Epic Records
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Sounds like … Franz Ferdinand with personality disorders.

Modest Mouse, fronted by the enigmatic Issac Brock, have returned with their first long player since 2004’s mainstream success, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, and have thus entered into an era of their career where they’ll find every Tom, Seth and Mischa scouring the tracks of We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank for the next foot-stomping Float On follow up.

We Were Dead opens strongly with March Into The Sea, a frenetic portrait of complex commercialised modern life that echoes the bands work on 1998’s The Moon & Antarctica –“We all stumbled round tangled up in the cords from our phones, V.C.R. and our worldly woes.” The track, which sets the tone for the rest of the album, builds to a crescendo that gives way to first single Dashboard, which seems to answer Float On’s “we’ll float on, good news is on the way” with “we scheme and we scheme but we always blow it.” James Mercer of The Shins provides back up vocals on the infectious We Have Everything, and the 8-minute Spitting Venom remains strong despite varying between sea-shanty, blistering rock and indie groove.

No artist deserves all of their post-‘hit’-art to be endlessly compared and graded against their ‘breakthrough’ work, yet this is unfortunately inevitable. We Were Dead, while perhaps being slightly overlong, not as intriguing as The Moon & Antarctica, or as easily accessible as Good News, should be seen for what it is, and that is a strong, intelligent album in the arc of Modest Mouse’s career. Here they have proven their ability to write irresistibly enjoyable dance-rock songs that bear a razors edge that quietly rips at modern life, only revealed when the lyric booklet is pried open – suitably mimicking the commercialized culture they so often criticize.

7 out of 10

Jarvis | Jarvis Cocker
Rough Trade | March 4th

Review by Tom Fairman

Website
Rough Trade Records
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Sounds like … a quiet evening, a good book, and a glass of red wine with the former front man of Pulp.

Before I delve into this review, there’s something you should know.

I had a little aurgasm the first time I heard Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time, the hip-rockin’, head-bobbin’ first single off Jarvis. So with my rock-sytocin levels going through the roof, the following review may be a little skewed.

With Pulp on hiatus, Jarvis Cocker found himself free to indulge in some unfettered song writing, the result being the ear-pleasing aforementioned first single, originally written for Lil’ Blue Eyes herself, Nancy Sinatra.

Jarvis rattles along with the infectious sardonic wit that was so representative of Pulp’s work, with Fat Children a pitch-perfect example. Yet, there are numerous departures from that Pulp-sound, with other tracks on the album employing softly played pianos and brushed drums, creating a solo record that is more synonymous with “intimate” than “personal.”

However, the real beauty of Jarvis is the urgency to the dryness, with Cocker pleading with fainéant youth on From Auschwitz to Ipswich, “can’t you please do something with your life?” The (unfortunately secret) track, Cunts are Still Running the World, is the most hilarious, brutally honest and perhaps only disco-protest-song of our generation. From beginning to end, it safely eludes falling into the Bob Geldof & co. preaching pit, Jarvis seeing that the problems of the world can’t be solved by a $2 white plastic wristband.

So as the album slowly stops spinning, and you’re left panting, staring lovingly at everyone’s favourite bespectacled hipster, I can only hope that it was as good for you as it was for me.

9 out of 10