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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.
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Weathered now, their herky-jerk stands up smartly to interjections from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
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Blender[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]
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A useful addition to a genre that prizes brain over brawn.
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Probably the biggest complaint could be that the group has tightened up their sound even more on this release, leaving behind even more of the roughshod qualities that made their earlier discs blister with such energy.
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Ultimately, what makes Good News so successful is that it retains the melancholy mood of past works, while at the same time adding depth and maturity.
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PopMattersReview 1: Unequivocally great, a logical progression in style and scope. [score=90]; Review 2: A record that manages to balance a swarm of new ideas with their most steadfast and well-loved tricks. [score=80]
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SpinHalf expansive, burnished radio-rock, half swampy Delta hoodoo-hollerin' that reeks of Brock's Southern sojourn. [May 2004, p.103]
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This is a more varied album than The Moon and Antarctica (which did seem to have only one speed), and with the return of original member Dan Gallucci, Brock appears to have revived the heavy lead guitar playing of their early work.
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FilterIt's passionate. It's thoughtful. It's catchy. It's their breakout moment, their best record, and... it will be one of the best albums of 2004.[#9, p.100]
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It just feels that amidst his bare and heartfelt explorations of life and the old wooden box wherein we all end up, Brock has learned to dance, learned to allow himself a smile.
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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.
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The best Modest Mouse album yet.
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Alternative PressIf Good News... isn't the pillar-like masterpiece Modest Mouse fans have waited years for, it's proof that things haven't completely fallen apart. [May 2004, p.92]
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For all its transcendent moments, Good News ultimately fails to hold together all that well as an album.
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No bad news here, just more headline-making from an innovative, ever-maturing group of musicians.
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Never happily slotting into any template demanded back in their home town, MM are nearer to some wondrous mish-mash of Pavement and Beck; closer in harmony to The Flaming Lips.
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Q Magazine45 bonkers minutes. [Jun 2004, p.103]
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Entertainment Weekly[A] Tom Waits-ian reinvention. [9 Apr 2004, p.84]
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On the group's fourth proper album, a mightier Mouse refine their weirdness and become a pop band while grasping at dark truths that pop ordinarily denies.
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While the album is not as cohesive a vision, many of its songs are more focused.
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The A.V. ClubThe songs still rely on Brock's echoing guitar patterns and Mobius-strip lyrics, delivered in the voice of a harried, hip-hop-inflected square-dance caller, but though the vehicle stays the same, the scenery outside the window changes considerably.
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BillboardA daring yet accessible disc.
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The Mouse is back, just as polished and schizo as it ever was.
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This is a great band's most fully realized and mature album in a career already dotted with highpoints.
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MojoMoments of simple, exultant joy are plentiful. [Jun 2004, p.102]
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At these transcending moments, "Good News...". is elevated into excellence. But overall, there is too much Mouse that bores and not enough Mouse that roars.
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If there's a touchstone band for this album, it's Little Creatures-era Talking Heads cranking out songs that are joyously eccentric, celebratory and catchy.
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UncutThere are some pleasantly elaborate, wayward songs here... Forays into funk and Tom Waits' scrapyard are cringe-inducing, though. [Sep 2004, p.110]
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Even though this album isn't as immediately or showily brilliant as The Moon & Antarctica, Good News for People Who Love Bad News reveals itself as just as strong a statement.
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New Musical Express (NME)A real-life pop record. Well, not pop in the Girls Aloud sense of the word obviously, more in the drop-dead, fuzz-box brilliant 'Here Comes Your Man' sense. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]
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Good News could well be looked back on as the band's rite of passage, filled with energetic but reckless noisemakers and more studied, stylistically adventurous tracks.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 196 out of 213
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Mixed: 6 out of 213
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Negative: 11 out of 213
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metheDec 22, 2006Goodbye old modest mouse.
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Dec 11, 2020It is such a great album that I've been listening to it frequently ever since I stumbled upon it, a whole year ago.
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Feb 11, 2019Loved 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.