Track Listing

1. Worms Vs. Birds
2. Four Fingered Fisherman
3. Wagon Ride Return
4. Classy Plastic Lumber
5. From Point A to Point B
6. Path of Least Resistance
7. It Always Rains on a Picnic
8. Dukes Up
9. Think Long
10. Every Penny Fedcat
11. Mice Eat Cheese
12. Race Car Grin You Ain't No Landmark
13. Red Hand Case
14. Secret Angent X-9
15. Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect?
16. Call to Dial a Song
17. 5-4-3-2-1 Lipsoff
18. Woodgrain
19. BMX Crash
20. Sucker Betru
21. Black Blood and Old Newagers
22. Swy
23. Austral Opithecus
24. Singunchaser

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33667 in Music
• Released on: 2007-11-26
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
After stepping up to the major-label plate with The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse reach back to their roots with Sad Sappy Sucker. Sucker is actually the band's first recording, released in 2001 but created back in 1994. It was shelved in favor of Lonesome Crowded West as their debut, but Sucker is still a fine piece of the Modest Mouse lineage.

Although parts of Sucker are experimental compared to the band's current polish, this isn't some rarity to be enjoyed only by collectors. Breezy melodies build into jagged choruses as singer Isaac Brock shows he can be both tender and playfully aggressive. Most of the songs clock in between two and three minutes, leaving room for numerous gems in the course of the 24-track album. While 12 of the songs come from a recording session with K Records' Calvin Johnson, a chunk of Sucker material comes from Brock's "Dial-a-Song" phase, during which callers heard new songs by dialing into his answering machine. These experiments range from lo-fi combos of distorted instruments and whiny vocals to complete songs, like the bluesy rock jam on "Secret Agent X-9." The Dial-a-Songs--and a message left by Murder City Devils front man Spencer Moody ("Call to Dial-a-Song")--are both comic relief and proof that Modest Mouse didn't gain their indie-rock cult status by accident. The talent's been there from the beginning. --Jennifer Maerz

Album Description
K Records proudly unveils an important document detailing the early days of Modest Mouse. Recorded in 1994, 'Sad Sappy Sucker' is the lost Modest Mouse album, originally intended oto be the band's debut full length. 'Sad Sappy Sucker' has 24 tracks and are the earliset recordings from Modern Mouse. 2001 release. 23 tracks!

Customer Reviews

True fan, still a bad album
Its great to see that an album can in fact be recorded using nothing but crappy equiptment, but for christ sake, keep it in a vault, far far far far away from a cd store shelf near me. Lo-fi is one thing, this falls under the category crap-fi.

Sad it is
The title of this album fits it very well. Modest Mouse should have just kept it mysteriously floating around the net. Get the Moon and Antarctica instead.

Primordial
"Sad Sappy Sucker" is not Modest Mouse's best work ("Lonesome Crowded West" is), but neither is it trash. In fact, it serves as a fantastic left book-end to the group's career thus far. Granted, the production even on the best tunes is awful, the answering-machine ditties are largely annoying, but still, this record gives the listener a chance to hear one of rock's greatest bands in its infancy, and the experience is a most rewarding one. Themes both musical and lyrical that Modest Mouse will later give definitive treatment to are first explored on "Sad Sappy Sucker", and this is reason enough to buy and enjoy it.