Tynan's Anger

SONGS OF THE DECADE #41

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Modest Mouse - Ocean Breathes Salty (2004)




Personally, I've always preferred Modest Mouse at their loud-mouthed, snarky best, which is why I've rarely enjoyed anything the band has put out post-Lonesome Crowded West. That kind of raw sarcasm is difficult to achieve when you've "matured" like Modest Mouse did with The Moon and Antartica, but it provides perfect fodder to a "throwback" like "Ocean Breathes Salty," one of the few songs to combine the loopier parts of Isaac Brock's post-Moon guitar work with his Black Francis vocal inflections. On "Ocean Breathes Salty," Brock may have become the only '90s alternative rocker to integrate R & B/hip-hop traces in his music without seeming ridiculous (I'm looking at you, Chris Cornell and Rivers Cuomo.) Brock did so as the accidental result of his own creative process, not by throwing Timbaland at the helms and letting his publicists do the rest.

For better or for worse, Modest Mouse has redefined major label alternative rock—Brock set this decade's prime barometer for selling songs for ads when he told the A.V. Club, "Figuring out ways to pay the rent isn't really a tough decision." and Good News For People Who Love Bad News may have been the first major label rock album ever to be called "indie" rock in the mainstream press (of course, that's as much a product of the unlikely success of "Float On," a song from a band mainstream critics actually liked," as anything else. You can try to laugh away the fact that Modest Mouse is now a chart-topper, but it doesn't change the fact that the band has succeeded commercially with so little sacrifice to their artistic vision. They're not off the artistic roll call yet.

Labels: 2000s, lists, modest mouse, ocean breathes salty, pop music, songs of the decade