The Used from Orem, Utah is an odd, but very cool band. I've enjoyed most of their releases since the debut in 2002 with Lies For The Liars as the highlight. Thinks they have got better with age even if they had greater success early in their career, especially with the debut. But I have a weakness for beautiful melodies and think that they were a little too alternative in the beginning of their careers as opposed to the bombastic masterpiece Lies For The Liars. Vulnerable is the bands latest effort album and also the first on their new label Hopeless Records. Musically the album doesn’t feel as great surprise to me. The band continues to deliver alternative rock with smart pop melodies in their own way and does it really well. However, the album is their most commercial so far and pretty pop orientated, which I'm not completely convinced that it is the way to go. I like it personally, but the clinical and electronic production from John Feldmann that takes away plenty of the bands alternative edge, so they could have saved some of the effects.
The opening on Vulnerable is really good with awesome tracks like "I Come Alive" and "This Fire" when the band shows that they are in great shape. But the album loses a bit in the second half, as the songs gets a bit to polished and soft.
So it's a bit like always from the band, we got a bunch of great tracks, but also a couple of standard ones. Not their best so far, but not the weakest either!
The name Modest Mouse derives from a passage from the Virginia Woolf story "The Mark on the Wall" which reads "...and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people..."
