Only half as irritating as the old Modest Mouse

It is great to hear that indie rock/pop trio Modest Mouse had changed its tune. It was always pretty iffy -- its music came across as intentionally difficult, and all in all they seemed to waste their potentially good songs on being agonizingly ironic and clever to appeal to overwrought hipsters. In short, they were the epitome of too-cool-for-you indie rock; not only had you never heard of them, but they didn't want you to have heard of them because obviously you wouldn't get it, you corporate automaton.\nWell, this album certainly marks a progression -- punk-esque numbers like "Float On" and other honest-to-goodness rockers like "Satin in a Coffin" and "Black Cadillac" carry Good News towards the all-important goal of being tolerable to the mainstream. However, the opening song "The World at Large" sums up the old Modest Mouse perfectly -- it's painfully annoying, and without a doubt most of the loathsome emo types will call it brilliant, just as they called Ben Gibbard's hammy, slobbering lyrics on the Postal Service's Give Up "poetic." The first rule of hipsterdom is that you only praise hipster music, regardless of whether or not it's actually any good.\nThis album deserves an "A" in comparison to the lackluster releases which have marked Modest Mouse's career. It has so much potential to be a stunning, stellar band if it just didn't try so damned hard to be "different." But then again, you laugh at it because it's different, and it laughs at you because you're all the same.