I read the feature article in Spin last year about Modest Mouse and I found a copy of it on the magazine's website. If you haven't read it I suggest that you do, but here's a quote about Good News:
"its bright-side buoyancy suits the songs, which are about how life will beat your ass and how the only way to cope is to learn to love it anyway."
Keeping that in mind, this song makes a lot of sense to me. I think it exemplifies the quote's description of the songs on this album. The lines about everyone being a building burning make me think that they're saying that everyone is basically in the same boat. We all go through shit and there's always stuff that sucks in our lives. He then goes on to say that everyone is an ocean drowning and they should evaporate. Basically, really the only way to make things better is to stay above it all, lighten up about the shit because you're not alone and it's not going away anytime soon.
I also think the spider lines are a great example of this. You can spend your time focusing on the web, worrying about it, complaining about it, but there's other stuff, bad stuff in the case of this example, out there that we need to focus on. Don't dwell on one problem because there's another one coming and you're gonna have to deal with it. Similar idea with the dog. It apparently had license to bite somebody, but didn't. Don't waste time being angry about something and don't waste energy by being negative.
Now the Tetons. I really expect this to be the Indian reference, as someone pointed out earlier, as opposed to the mountains. I base this MM's recording history, most importantly the album "Lonesome Crowded West" because it feels like there're a lot of thematic elements having to do with Native Americans on it. My guess is that the reason he's blaming it on the Tetons is because the Tetons posed a large and recurring problem to the expansionist fervor that America was experiencing in the 1800s. They fought several costly wars with Americans and were basically mercilessly persecuted out of their territory over and over. Americans thought that the Tetons were a huge problem that needed solving, but in reality the Americans made them a problem when they didn't need to be. This goes along with the theme of making a big deal out of stuff that seems like it's impossible to get over or figure out but really is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
So that's what I think. It took a long time to write. It is highly possible that I am reading way too much into the Teton reference, so if anyone else has another opinion I'd really like to hear it. Yes, I actually looked up the Tetons in a history book and did cursory research.
I read the feature article in Spin last year about Modest Mouse and I found a copy of it on the magazine's website. If you haven't read it I suggest that you do, but here's a quote about Good News:
"its bright-side buoyancy suits the songs, which are about how life will beat your ass and how the only way to cope is to learn to love it anyway."
Keeping that in mind, this song makes a lot of sense to me. I think it exemplifies the quote's description of the songs on this album. The lines about everyone being a building burning make me think that they're saying that everyone is basically in the same boat. We all go through shit and there's always stuff that sucks in our lives. He then goes on to say that everyone is an ocean drowning and they should evaporate. Basically, really the only way to make things better is to stay above it all, lighten up about the shit because you're not alone and it's not going away anytime soon.
I also think the spider lines are a great example of this. You can spend your time focusing on the web, worrying about it, complaining about it, but there's other stuff, bad stuff in the case of this example, out there that we need to focus on. Don't dwell on one problem because there's another one coming and you're gonna have to deal with it. Similar idea with the dog. It apparently had license to bite somebody, but didn't. Don't waste time being angry about something and don't waste energy by being negative.
Now the Tetons. I really expect this to be the Indian reference, as someone pointed out earlier, as opposed to the mountains. I base this MM's recording history, most importantly the album "Lonesome Crowded West" because it feels like there're a lot of thematic elements having to do with Native Americans on it. My guess is that the reason he's blaming it on the Tetons is because the Tetons posed a large and recurring problem to the expansionist fervor that America was experiencing in the 1800s. They fought several costly wars with Americans and were basically mercilessly persecuted out of their territory over and over. Americans thought that the Tetons were a huge problem that needed solving, but in reality the Americans made them a problem when they didn't need to be. This goes along with the theme of making a big deal out of stuff that seems like it's impossible to get over or figure out but really is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
So that's what I think. It took a long time to write. It is highly possible that I am reading way too much into the Teton reference, so if anyone else has another opinion I'd really like to hear it. Yes, I actually looked up the Tetons in a history book and did cursory research.