When I saw the recent hype on Modest Mouse’s website about the new video for the CD’s single, “Float On,” I was, quite frankly, distraught. I didn’t want Modest Mouse, with their characteristically gnashing-teeth, stomping-feet, subtly-dripping-with-rage rock n’ roll to slide into that realm of ready-for-MTV, slickly-produced hooha that sucks up a lot of potentially great music.

I also worried that this album’s cover art was more accessible than that of their previous release, The Moon and Antarctica, which sported floating hands amidst a lavender collage of surreal landscape imagery. More accessibility means more people buying the album, more people listening to it and then the pretentious music snob in me has one less band to brag about. Unfortunately, the possibility of losing Modest Mouse to a mainstream audience occurred to me when I discovered with shock and horror that a Nissan Mini Van was flying across my TV screen accompanied by “Gravity Rides Everything.”

However, after popping the CD into my nearly-obsolete Discman and listening to it practically all day, I realized that I actually don’t care how famous Modest Mouse gets, how much money they make or how many times the unrelentingly catchy “Float On” gets played. This abrupt change of heart came when I realized that the edges of my lips had met my humming ears in a toothy, goofy grin. This CD is filled with good rock ’n’ roll and it doesn’t matter who ends up listening to it, because everyone should.

Nevertheless, this album without a doubt lacks the cohesiveness, artistic vision, social commentary and breathing, bleeding emotion of The Moon and Antarctica, and I hesitate to say that it’s any more raw, rollicking and exposed than The Lonesome Crowded West. The sound is much more mature, however, than any of the early albums or EPs and each different track of Good News for People Who Love Bad News marks the band’s progress and ability to create albums that stand alone. Those who are nostalgic for the old Modest Mouse might find this CD difficult to swallow at first, but wait until track six, when “Bury Me With It” starts. It immediately breaks into your bedroom, pulls you up by the collar of your shirt and commands your attention. Its driving bass line and heavy drum practically stomp your foot for you and even the most rhythmless listeners will find themselves playing an invisible drum kit when the inescapable beats blast into their ears. Isaac Brock, in his characteristically just-pretend-you-can’t-feel-my-pain, just-try-to-ignore-me growl shouts, “Well fads they come and fads they go / And God I love that rock ’n’ roll! / Well the point was fast but it was too blunt to miss / Life handed us a paycheck we said / ‘we worked harder than this!’ / Please! Bury me / with it!”

On the whole, the new CD release from Modest Mouse has continued to present as much satisfaction as I’d hoped. It is definitely a sleeker model of the band’s former albums and the sound is much more accessible. There is less heavy guitar distortion, less of Brock’s throaty, snarling shout-singing and more melodic, slower-paced songs than have appeared on previous albums.

The jury is still out on the fate of Modest Mouse, however. If this album really does make superstars out of these four musicians, then rock ’n’ roll bands everywhere aiming to create an album capable of jump-starting them onto the cover of Rolling Stone now have a new challenge. They will have to use Good News’s 16 polished, clever, ambitious, inspiring and unabashedly amusing tracks as their new guides, as opposed to pop music’s tired, formulaic precedent-setters.

As much as listeners, with tongue-in-cheek, whine about another band’s potential progression from “indie” to “popular,” they also have to admire Modest Mouse for not making a generic lame hipster rock band album that they know will sell. Good News for People Who Love Bad News is still very much a child of Modest Mouse and listening to it will not disappoint their loyal fans. If Modest Mouse just so happens to make it to late-night MTV or even gets a spot in the Clear Channel rotation, I’ll give in and congratulate them. This album has the potential to offer them a new kind of fame and popularity, and they deserve it.