Now is as good a time as any to mention this isn’t “new” Modest Mouse music. Of course it’s non-album material, but it’s not like the band just recently sat down and wrote the thing. In fact, No One’s First and You’re Next is comprised of songs written during the Good News For People Who Love Bad News/We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank sessions that didn’t quite make the cut. So if anything, this EP shows how fucking good these guys are. This is the stuff that wasn’t good enough. The rejects. And they’re still awesome.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The EP can’t hold a candle to the two albums that helped give birth to it, but it still stands strong on it’s own. It rips through eight tracks in the typical fashion that made Modest Mouse so popular over the last decade. It’s a nod to notions of pop music without sacrificing a bit of their original frustrated and ethereal origins.
No One’s First gets off on a good foot with two strong singles (can I call them that?), “Satellite Skin” and “Guilty Cocker Spaniels.” They then jump right into the more mellow stuff on “Autumn Beds” and the sprawling epic “The Whale Song,” which shows more incredible song writing that has helped the band establish itself over the years. Kooky disjointed Modest Mouse come into play late on “King Rat,” which sounds exactly what one might expect of this EP. It’s different, not terribly strong, but fun as hell.
If anything, No One’s First and You’re Next teaches us an important lesson. That lesson is Modest Mouse is the best. They are just simply that good. And while this EP might not be their best work by any stretch, it’s certainly strong enough to stand out among all other EPs of rejected material. They could have put this all on a new album, and I would have never known. But they don’t play like that. They’re just too good for it.
Modest Mouse – “Satellite Skin” [MP3]
Comments are closed | 
