Album · Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is an album by Modest Mouse, released in 2007. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 85 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Dashboard”, on 46 lists with a best position of #2.
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse's fifth album, landed on Epic in 2007, three years after Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and the lineup news was the headline: Johnny Marr, the former Smiths guitarist, was now a full-time member. This is the only full-length he made with the band, and the only one with Joe Plummer on board, too. It's also the last to feature founding bassist Eric Judy.
The record was first sketched as a concept piece following a ship's crew, with somebody dying in every song, and while it doesn't stick to the script, the nautical theme soaks through the whole thing. Isaac Brock yelps and mutters like a sea captain who has seen too much, Marr's bright, wiry guitar lines coil around Brock's jagged strumming, Jeremiah Green keeps the drums lurching forward, and Tom Peloso's fiddle and horn give the deck a woozy, ramshackle sway. "Dashboard" struts in on a rubbery groove and a gang-shout chorus, while "Missed the Boat" drifts along on a gentler, sunnier current.
It sold steadily, too: the RIAA certified it Gold on June 11, 2009, and by February 2015 it had moved 649,000 copies in the US.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dashboard | 46 | #2 | – | 2007–2025 | |
| 2 | Missed the Boat | 28 | #4 | – | 2007–2026 | |
| 3 | We've Got Everything | 8 | #44 | – | 2007–2014 | |
| 4 | Fire it Up | 3 | #40 | – | 2007–2025 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.