Modest Mouse - No One's First, And You're Next
Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 3:25PM 
Indie - Though Modest Mouse technically ceased to be an independent rock band upon signing with Epic in 2001, the group will forever stand under that umbrella term. With the platinum success of their last two albums - 2004's Good News For People Who Love Bad News and 2007's We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank - The Mouse became perhaps the Biggest Indie Band In The World, and certainly one of the best, making their pending EP all the more hotly anticipated. No One's First, And You're Next collects 8 tracks from the News and Ship (all the band's releases have titles too long to be worth repeating in consecutive sentences) sessions that didn't make the respective LPs. Ironic, isn't it, that the band would exhibit such restraint in compiling albums, but so little in naming them?
Don't let the exclusion of these songs from "proper" LPs cast doubts as to their quality: previous Modest Mouse compilations such as Everywhere And His Nasty Parlour Tricks and the indispensable Building Nothing Out Of Something (again with the titles!) contained material every bit as good as their full-length counterparts. Six of the tracks on No One's First... have been released in the preceding months across three limited 7" singles, so die-hard fans - trust us, there are plenty - will probably end up owning the songs twice, while the rest of us will content ourselves with the collected works.
Artist Site MySpace Epic Records Site
Reader Comments (1)
I'm happy to report that although after hearing Satellite Skin live and The Whale Song live and not digging them and then hearing other songs from this EP previously released or leaked and not being impressed by them, I am, all in all, loving this full EP. I can listen to the studio-recorded version of Whale Song and Satellite Skin 100 times a day easily. Guilty Cockerspaniels grew on me and I really love King Rat. M.M. and their rodents...
I've Got It All (Most) and Perpetual Motion Machine both definitely have a Good News feel to them. I was glad that this EP doesn't have a similar vibe to their last full-length album, We Were Dead, their album that is my least favorite.
I was worried there for a while that all my favorite bands had gone to shit. Since Regina Spektor came out with her new album massacring old songs of hers previously only sung live and collaborating with lots of others to create positively terrible lyrics and a sound that does not belong to her but to the mainstream music industry, I've felt betrayed and deeply saddened. Then Blue October's BAD new album and The Decemberists electric guitar rifts and two new members with their shitty new album....I couldn't handle this EP sucking, too and losing one of my favorite bands. I can't wait to hear the whole EP live at a Modest Mouse show I'm going to Sept. 20th!! I hope they play lots of stuff from Building Nothing and This is a Long Drive again; those are two of my favorite albums.