3 out of 5

Label: Epic

Produced by: Isaac Brock, Brian Deck, Phil Ek

I took a refresher listen to Good News For People Who Love Bad News and Ugly Casanova after giving this EP a few spins for a review, just to verify I had my ears set on straight.  I fell out of love with Modest Mouse some years back, and maybe – alas – because of their big hit with ‘Float On,’ but honestly, it was more lead Isaac Brock’s flirting with Johnny Marr in the band that sort of shifted how I heard the music, and it ended up tainting all that came before.

The opinions involved in this shift are vague at best, but the culmination of elements that I approved of on Moon & Antarctica – represented by working with Red Red Meat guy Brian Deck on production of that album – allowed me to look past some of the encroaching musical aspects of that disc that would portend Mouse’s more poply accessible future (both musically and lyrically); that album, their Epic debut, felt like the realization of a Seattle upstart who idolized the world-weary grit of Chicago legends like RRM – Mouse’s post-punky get -me-outta-here yelps morphed into a mature, eyes-to-the-sky moody POV, filtered through a Deck-ified folky sensibility.  So the disc had a learning curve, but the promise it offered absolutely swayed me from the get-go.

Soon after that, the limited Night on the Sun vinyl dropped, back on Up Records, and… sounded like a mixed bag.  This ‘Everywhere’ EP covers the Night tracks plus some extras, and also, logically, sounds like a mixed bag.  I experienced my first pang of doubt for Mouse’s future just at the arrangement of the releases – I was a big supporter of the move to Epic as soon as I found out Deck was involved – as something about the sequence felt like back-pedaling.  This too is vague (and certainly ridiculous), but that there was nothing particularly distinct about ‘Night’ – it was very clearly from the Third sessions, and could be read as cuts that didn’t make the album – tossing it onto their old label felt like a bid for older fans to hang in there, and then to pretty immediately back it up with a major label wide release of the same (plus extras…) was the sheepish return to the fold.

I happily bought both at the time, mind you, but, as mentioned, it was when my devotion – Mouse being my first indie band “discovery” that felt like my own thing and not just following someone else’s recommendation – began to waver.

Now we all know preamble is pointless and doesn’t help the review, but it sure helps me organize my thoughts, and it’s my blog thing, so bleep blop here we are.

These are all good tracks, but they also all feel like better versions have been committed elsewhere.  Stripped of the expanse of a full album, though, it does help to zero in on how much space and depth Deck gives these songs, to the extent that I’d say the production is the best part of the EP.  And there is a wonderfully unwavering dusky mood cast o’er the tracks, finally punctuated by the alternate take of the punchy ‘I Came as a Rat,’ which, in combination with the aural nuances, does raise a couple of the tracks up to being notable, but for their subtleties.  This is an aspect of MM’s oeuvre that is only found during this period (before is punkier, after is shoutier), so it is nice to add a few more songs to that specific pile.

But there’s still a lot of “that sounds like…” that prevents the EP from coming into its own.

Opener ‘Willfull…’ is a pretty minor affair, but sets the sort of open-ended vibe that dominates the disc, and leads well enough into the slightly more motivated title track.  Both of these songs are well constructed, but function more as counterpoints to the tonally similar first set of tracks on Moon.  3 inch horses is even less direct, but does amuse for how full on Califone it goes with its clanging percussion.  ‘You’re the Good Things’ is very much latter-day Brock, with a breezy xylophone chine and poppy beat and lyrics that want to be heard (and are thus dumbly “clever”) over the singer’s willingness to fade into the layers of music evident elsewhere on this release and earlier releases.  Electro and weed tinged ‘The Air’ passes the time, but I’m not sure we needed another smoked out jam a la Antarctica’s ‘The Stars Are Projectors.’  ‘So Much Beauty in Dirt’ finds a nicely off-kilter key and guitar jangle but at a minute and a half, hasn’t the time to build on it.  However, it does blossom into the disc’s jangly, stomping highlight: ‘Here It Comes.’  The upfront, loose approach of the track makes it stand out from the otherwise fairly muted songs, although it ends up sounding more like an Ugly Casanova track than a Mouse one.  The slightly less clean-cut production of ‘Rat’ that closes things out, while not my favorite song off the Moon album, is a good juxtaposingly rousing closer for the EP.

So, unfortunately, while its good to be able to extend this portion of Modest mouses career with more material, that which appeared on the Everywhere EP – while excellently produced and composed  and thematically sound – feels somewhat like an afterthought, or songs that were better realized elsewhere.