No One's First and Then You're Next Review

You may have heard of this little band who's name comes from the end of one Virginia Woolf sentence and the beginning of the next . Modest Mouse. Scoring a steaming hot load of popularity that propelled them out of the whole “indie scene” and into the “pssh, I was way into that band before they got all popular” status with “Good News for People who Love Bad News.”
Man... I started listening to “No One's First, and Then You're Next” and.... I want to like it really badly.
Let's break it down.

Satelite skin:
Sweet track... I guess. This track is the best demonstration of the mediocrity that is going to rain down on you for the rest of the album. What makes this almost excruciating is there are little segments of the track that are AWESOME. For example: I love builds in songs that capitulate with this awesome, jaw-sawing crash. There isn't one in this song, but there are minor ones that teased me, that licked lasciviously and beckoned as a siren would; the end result was a frustrated sailor that fucked a manatee while hoping it wasn't a male so it wouldn't be gay. Weird things happen to you out on the sea. Sea madness, I've heard it called

Guilty Cocker Spaniel:
Again. Here we go. Again. Despite it's driving beat and similarity to older work the track is genuinely likable. Like that one girl, you know, the one with the tongue. She's not all that pretty, but she's fun and has just the right tinge of mental illness to keep her interesting, and unpredictable, and prone to massive outbursts of violence. One thing: Modest mouse's lyrics are so weird sometimes I have to focus on them and it keeps me from listening to the rest of the song. This particular attention-rending lyric is an outburst that if you're not listening to the lyrics and intro beforehand seems like an explosion of Turrets, which is punctuated by a stillness in the song. So, if you're thinking about something, like OH GOD I NEED TO GET MY LIFE TOGETHER. THERE ARE NO JOBS AVAILABLE, WHY DID I MAJOR IN THEATRE? SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT. You'll probably be pulled out of sobbing fetal ball by Isaac screaming “HAPPY HALLOWEEN!” with a nonplussed look on your face and a curious erection. This applies to all the ladies out there *wink.* Also, there's a similarity to Built to Spill that made me slobber and clap in recognition.

Autumn Beds:
There's an underlying Appalachian theme that's been creeping up on you the whole time you've been listening to this album. Folkish percussive bursts SHAKE YOU with the tender plucking of.... something that sounds like a banjo. Oh god, Modest Mouse, what are you doing? Could you be turning into some other beast that isn't fueled by desperation?
NO
THEY WILL NOT BE HAVING THAT BAD TEA.
This is the most hopeful song on this album, but don't let that dissuade you. You're about to be kicked in the proverbial nuts.

Whale Song:
You know... this is the first song that I heard on the album. Since then it has been played at least twice a day after that. At first it sounds like an instrumental. Sort of dream-like, wondering around in a giant glass toad's stomach. OH FUCK HERE'S COMES A GUITAR SNAKE POWERED BY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS, REARING ABOVE YOU AND GROWING EVER STRONGER.
Seriously, the guitar in adds a razor lining to this acid-trip. Then the singing comes in. Isaac starts, for the lack of a better work, chanting into the microphone, laying the foundation for a house that screams “NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU WORK, IF YOU DID EVERYTHING RIGHT FROM THIS POINT ON YOU WILL DIE JUST BEFORE YOU EVER REACH YOUR FULL POTENTIAL.”
When I said that modest Mouse was fueled by desperation, that wasn't being funny. Serious face- if you listen to this some sort of chain letter effect will go off in your brain and you'll either become some sort of paranoid lunatic that starts breaking into other people's houses to check their couches for loose change or you'll become an affluent oil tycoon with friends deeply entrenched in the old-money society of the place(s) that you choose to make your seasonal home.
Ramblings aside, cool guitar and repetitive vocals that are like a fucking drill to the head make for an overall pleasant experience. A good drill. Once made out of candy.
I say this because the first half of the song makes me incredibly nervous and elicits some sort of escape seeking behavior.

Perpetual Motion Machine

...what the fuck is this? What the fuck am I writing?
Also, what the hell is this song about? HAH HAH HAH JUST KIDDING IT'S ABOUT.... well, you know... phhhhhysssiccccccs? No, dumbass, it's a metaphor. Better luck next time. This songs starts with a sound that makes me recoil in horror because it's something new and frightens me to no end. Imagine a marching band from hell. Now put them in your ear. Now you've got a guy with a soft lisp rasping in your ear, conjuring images of suicide and constantly reminding you that some day, we're all going to die his breath feels like he's getting ready to stick his tongue in your ear. It's uncomfortable. Over and over and over again.
Then a trombone plays.
Take that, hope for the future, take it and cry in the back of a police car.

History Sticks to your feet
Now this is something that I recognize. The song is just kinetic, the bass is all like “Let's fucking go” and the guitar and whistling is all like “fuck yeah, let's circle around the back of you and shove you over this soft part.” The drums respond with I AM THE DRUMS LISTEN TO THE DRUMS DRUM DRUM DRUM.
That's enough of that.
I like builds. This song builds. Now, ordinarily that's pretty cool. What a lot of bands forget to do is to ease you off the crescendo like you would a junkie. Modest mouse demonstrates that they're a classier dealer, weaning you off a bit at the end so you don't feel like you should run through a wall or another solid object with all this excess energy.
Oh fuck, what's coming up?

King Rat
Ok, did Modest Mouse change over the years? Have they developed as a band to increase the scope and appeal of their music? The answer is a uterus-punching yes, one of the better yeses.
The song starts out with this little country-twanging guitar that gets cut off about 8 seconds into the song. Two hits from the kick-drum later and that beautiful picture that was painted by the previous jangling is shattered and placed in the background, stitching it to the rest of the scene by a wonderful violin...... with a lone gunman with megaphone screaming about how nothing is right and never will. This song is fun and energetic. Classic Modest Mouse with a sprinkling of the new to make it more interesting and.... new.

Oh dear god I'm almost done.

I've got it all (almost)
You may have caught on that a common theme of Modest mouse is desperation and futility. This is uncharacteristically cheerful....
….gotcha.
Damn... I... am.. so.. ggoood.

That joke, the terrible one that I just laid on you is pretty much the same one that you'll hear in the opening riff. The difference is that it's clever when they do it. Ok, so it seems like this is some sort of backlash to the bands rise in popularity. Maybe a nod to older fans (I'm not talking about me specifically, though it wouldn't be a huge surprise. I mean, I send Isaac letters about how I wish I was his little brother and that our parents were somehow tragically killed and we forged some sort of camaraderie on the streets as we fought for scraps of food and huddled together for warmth in some dystopian past only to become stronger and join a rag-tag group of musicians who were down on their luck and are eventually murdered by a political terrorist. The blast also incinerated Misty, the swarthy waitress who was the love interest of Isaac which now fuels his terrible vengeance that will ultimately save the city... with music. I get to carry his amp.)
The song starts sweet. It also ends sweet. It's like someone handed you a tube of chocolate and said “Finish this in an hour or I'll kill your family with your dog.” It starts out ok, but as you sink your teeth into the erotically shaped chocolate bar, in the middle you find that it's filled with baking chocolate. Oh dear god you're going to vomit.
….in a good way?

Closing thought
I hated this album when I first started listening to it. Maybe it was because I was in the mindset of “Sweet crackers, I can't wait to pick this thing apart like I'm going to do to Tekken 6” The more I tried to hate it the stronger it got. The more I listen to it the more I like it, but it requires picking apart the lyrics instead of just passively listening at them.
Overall, if this were a girl... it would be one that you would have to listen to for a bit and engage in an intellectual conversation with before she would consider giving you a squeezer behind the cotton candy machine. Also, she smokes.