Modest Mouse - "No One's First, And You're Next"

After two years of no new releases from Modest Mouse, they decided to take the same strategy that many popular musicians are taking now (including Jay-Z, the Black Eyed Peas and the Jonas Brothers), which is to release your first, third, and third singles before the album is released to pick up hype. I listened to these singles respectively and today I listened to the new record, "No One's First, And You're Next".

"No One's First..." is not a regular record. Modest Mouse recorded most of the songs included at various points throughout their career...the songs are mostly album outtakes or songs that they simply didn't release. This gives them some slack for the album being eight tracks long...making it shorter than every Modest Mouse album to date with the exception of 2001's "Everywhere & His Nasty Parlour Tricks", and making it shorter than your average general indie rock album.

The opening track is the first of the three singles released, "Satellite Skin". This is a good track for Isaac Brock's trademark shaky vocals, but otherwise, I find it to be a very average song. This is followed by one of my favorites, "Guilty Cocker Spaniels". This song starts out with the higher strings of an electric guitar being rapidly strummed, giving the song a light, almost tropical sound, but halfway through the song gets a bit more distorted, almost a little lo-fi. After this is the second single, "Autumn Beds", and one of my other favorite tracks. It's soft and slower, but doesn't contradict Brock's vocal style. The fifth track is "Perpetual Motion Machine" the third single, and another good one. The song is a stumbling, slow song that has a really honky-tonk kind of feel. The seventh track is "King Rat", the song indie rock fans know as "the song with the video that Heath Ledger directed but never released". The song itself has good instrumentals, and, in the Modest Mouse way, swiftly goes from a slow, clumsy song to a fast song and then back without ever losing construction. The last song, "I've Got It All (Most)", is my favorite track on the album. I really like the way the vocals and the bass line come together to form a harmony. This song has a feel similar to that of some of the songs on 2004's "Good News for People Who Love Bad News", making me believe it was recorded around that time. The song goes from the nearly minimal strum to a heavy rock tune for a little while during the chorus and then back, and then it goes to the rock chorus until the outro. Still, the song's structure stays intact the whole time.

All that positivity being said, I think that, as an album, "No One's First..." is a thoroughly average record. There are tracks that I liked above others, but those aren't even fantastic standalone tracks. Modest Mouse have had much more ambitious efforts in the past with albums like "Good News..." and 1997's "The Lonesome Crowded West". I think "No One's First..." is an album for Modest Mouse die-hards who have collected every album so far and are very familiar with the MM sound rather than casual listeners.

Key Tracks: "Guilty Cocker Spaniels", "Autumn Beds", "Perpetual Motion Machine", "King Rat" "I've Got it All (Most)"