Cosmic Mouse

Modest Mouse

Good News for People Who Love Bad News

Epic Records

Isaac Brock, the muse of Washington state’s Modest Mouse, has one foot in the grave — not in the self-destructive sense, but in the reflective sense of mortality awareness.

On the band’s last album, “The Moon & Antarctica,” Mr. Brock seemed openly fascinated by the afterlife question (“It’s hard to remember we’re alive for the last time,” he sang on “Lives”); on “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” he has become fixated by it.

Every other cut on the buoyantly nutty “Good News,” produced by Dennis Herring with help from the Flaming Lips, is an angular take on planetary apocalypse, death and what happens next — if anything.

“For your sake, I hope heaven and hell are really there/But I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Mr. Brock, a talented student of the Talking Heads’ David Byrne, taunts on “Ocean Breathes Salty.”

He sings here in a hurried, wordy rush that sometimes smacks of Eminem — that is, if Eminem rapped about God, the poet Charles Bukowski and that nagging theological problem of pain.

On “Bury Me With It,” Mr. Brock stridently asks to be put out of his misery in the event of some “Mad Max”-like cataclysm. A bizarre interlude in the style of latter-day Tom Waits called “Dig Your Grave” ends simply with the line, “I hope you’re dead.”

None of this depresses. “Good News” is a defiant good time. It says, afterlife or no, let’s be sure to put the meantime to good uses such as love and rock ’n’ roll.

Sure, the album title and its closing song, “The Good Times Are Killing Me,” are about as gloomily ironic as you can get, short of being a pessimistic crank.

But on “Interlude (Milo),” there’s a sign of what could pass for optimism: a baby whimpering to pump-organ accompaniment. It’s the sound of family, the one doubtproof way of achieving immortality.

Modest Mouse — singer-guitarist Mr. Brock, bassist Eric Judy, guitarist-keyboardist Dann Gallucci and new drummer Benjamin Weikel — are like the Clash during its “Sandinista” period: in a thrill-seeking mood where no detour is too far off the beaten track.

“Good News” opens with the squeal of New Orleans’ Dirty Dozen Brass Band, whose horns also bulk up the acid Dixieland of “The Devil’s Workday.” Banjos and accordions also vie for attention in a busy mix.

The first two proper songs — “The World at Large” and “Float On” — are actually one, constructed from identical chord progressions. Yet, through manipulations of tone and time signature, they sound completely different — the first a quirky, Mellotron-soaked conversation-song, the next a communal punk chant.

Scratchy guitars and English beats turn up later on “Dance Hall” and “The View.” “Blame It on the Tetons” brings out Mr. Brock’s inner folkie. Corpses rear their heads again on “Satin in a Coffin” and “Black Cadillacs.”

It all may be a bit macabre, but thinking about death is Mr. Brock’s way of affirming life. “We only have one chance to make things right,” he exhorts on the album’s penultimate riff-rocker, recalling the theme of “Lives.”

Remember, this is called “Good News.” It’s the gospel, according to Modest Mouse.