• Record Label: Sony
  • Release Date: Apr 6, 2004
Metascore
83

Universal acclaim - based on 32 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 28 out of 32
  2. Negative: 0 out of 32
  1. A lot of major label-imposed ideas, like rhythm guitar and a heartbreakingly conventional new bass sound, combine to utterly ruin the record's first half. If you can make it through to News' innards, however, an EP's worth of something like better-recorded, more thought-out Lonesome Crowded West material awaits.
  2. Blender
    60
    [Brock is] adept at wringing out emotion while straddling sentimentality, but too often here, gauche studio affectations make his sap sound plain cheap. [Apr 2004, p.134]
  3. Gone is pretty much everything they’ve learned in the last eight years or so, ditching all the progress they’ve made in favor of just making another Modest Mouse record. The results, needless to say, are disappointing.
  4. Uncut
    40
    There are some pleasantly elaborate, wayward songs here... Forays into funk and Tom Waits' scrapyard are cringe-inducing, though. [Sep 2004, p.110]
User Score
8.7

Universal acclaim- based on 213 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Negative: 11 out of 213
  1. methe
    Dec 22, 2006
    3
    Goodbye old modest mouse.
  2. Dec 11, 2020
    10
    It is such a great album that I've been listening to it frequently ever since I stumbled upon it, a whole year ago.
  3. Feb 11, 2019
    10
    Loved this album. Anything these guys make will always be better than half of everything else I've heard. Dance Hall is a good song, too.