Modest Mouse is a trio from Issaquah, a tiny provincial town in Washington State. Guitarist and vocalist Isaac Brock, helped by bassist Eric Judy and drummer Jeremiah Green (also in Red Stars Theory and Satisfact), has been at it since 1994, as documented by Sad Sappy Sucker (K, 2001), that collects the first unreleased album, their debut single Blue Cadet-3 (K, 1994) and the single Birds Vs Worms (Hit Or Miss, 1997).
The 1994 single contains the delicate melodic tapestry of It Always Rains on a Picnic and the shouted anthem of Dukes Up.
The unreleased tracks range from the punk-rock of Classy Plastic Lumber to the anemic ballad From Point A to Point B, from the drunk, jazzy shuffle of Red Hand Case to the angry rant of Race Car Grin You Aint No Landmark. Hardly a masterpiece.
The band's first album was the double-disc This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (Up, 1996), a sprawling chronicle of everyday life in the 1990s. The best tracks (the melodramatic Dramamine, with a long romantic guitar-based coda, the seven-minute syncopated psycho-boogie Beach Side Property) manage to inject the quirky, dischordant and unstable rock and roll of the Pixies and even the Minutemen into the lo-fi pop format of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh and Pavement. The voice does most of the job. Isaac Brock recites his stories modulating the voice in a dramatic manner that often pushes the music aside. For example, the instruments simply lay down a quiet, steady carpet of low-key jumming in Custom Concern that Brock's neurotic delivery fills with meaning. And the psychodrama She Ionizes And Atomizes is worthy of a Brecht-ian actor. The instruments, on the other hand, tend to continue a song, after Brock has laid down its story, with (intentionally) sloppy jamming that adds to the sense of juvenile alienation. It may sound like they simply don't know how to end the song, but that very clumsiness is the most effective way to end it. Thus the lengthy codas that seem to share little with the original tune, and in some cases (Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset, Make Everyone Happy/Mechanical Birds) basically override it.
Despite spearheading the emo revolution, Modest Mouse displayed enough affinities with the punk generation and the new wave, notably in the defiant punk-folk rants Breakthrough and Dog Paddle, the one-minute emotional burst of Might, the vehement funk-punk of Tundra/ Desert, and Lounge, in the vein of early Talking Heads (with another long coda, this time pivoting around an austere duet of cello and guitar).
Brock's honest, heart-felt lyrics were often more significant than the music, and this turned out to be particularly true for the following EPs. However, the title-track from Interstate 8 (Up, 1996) and The Fruit That Ate Itself from Modest Mouse (K, 1997) succeed in marrying lyrics and music.
The single Birds Vs Worms (Hit Or Miss, 1997) contains the frantic and spastic lullaby Every Penny Fed Car and two bluesy numbers: Worms vs. Birds (imagine a lo-fi version of the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar) and Four Fingered Fisherman.
Brock's in-depth look at the lumperproletariat and middle-class of the USA grew much sharper and musically assured with The Lonesome Crowded West (Up, 1998). His portraits of drifters, losers and disillusioned fools could now rely on supporting structures made of fiddle-driven folk (Jesus Christ Was An Only Child), country-rock (Trailer Trash), atmospheric pop (Polar Opposites) and even blues (Styrofoam Boots). The band could now rock, albeit in a goofy way (Lounge, reprised from This Is A Long Drive, Shit Luck, halfway between Led Zeppelin and punk-rock, and especially Doin' The Cockroach, their most ferocious song yet). Lyrically, Brock's specialty remained the road-song (Out Of Gas, the eleven-minute Truckers Atlas, and especially Long Distance Drunk, which is also one of the most original creations of the album), a genre to which he was making the most significant additions in decades. But songs such as the emphatic and convoluted Teeth Like God's Shoeshine, Cowboy Dan and Convenient Parking showed that he was capable of destabilizing any genre and style he decided to toy with. Generally speaking, the songs were more cohesive and less anarchic. Gone were the lengthy nonsensical codas. Brock was now firmly in command, and he was angrier and more bitter.
A few outtakes appeared on single, above all Other People's Lives (Up, 1998) and Never Ending Math Equation (Subpop, 1998).
Building Nothing Out Of Something (Up, 2000) collects the singles and other rarities.
(Translation by/ Tradotto da Paolo Latini)
Modest Mouse è un trio proveniente da Issaquah, una minuscola città di provincia nello stato di Washington. Il chitarrista e cantante Isaac Brock, aiutato dal bassista Eric Judy e dal batterista Jeremiah Green (anche membro dei Red Stars Theory e Satisfact), li ha formati nel 1994, come documentato su Sad Sappy Sucker (K, 2001), che raccoglie il loro primo album, mai pubblicato, il loro singolo di debutto Blue Cadet-3 (K, 1994) e il singolo Birds Vs Worms (Hit Or Miss, 1997).
Il primo singolo del 1994 conteneva la delicata melodia di It Always Rains on a Picnic e l'anthem urlato di Dukes Up.
Le tracce dell'album mai pubblicato spaziavano dal punk-rock di Classy Plastic Lumber alla ballad anthemica From Point A to Point B, dall'avvinazzata, jazzy e confusa Red Hand Case al rantolo Race Car Grin You Aint No Landmark. Difficilmente un capolavoro.
Il primo album ufficiale della band fu un doppio, This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (Up, 1996), un abbozzo di cronaca della vita degli anni '90. Le migliori tracce (Dramamine, Custom Concern) riescono ad iniettare l'angolato e discordante rock and roll di Pixies e Minutemen nel lo-fi pop di Guided By Voices Sebadoh e Pavement. Le oneste ed accorate vignette di Brock valgono ben piu della musica, e gli EP che seguiranno lo confermeranno. Comunque, la title-track di Interstate 8 (Up, 1996) e The Fruit That Ate Itself da Modest Mouse (K, 1997) riusciranno a far sposare musica e testi, ma tutte storie malinconiche catturano l'attenzione di chi ascolta.
Il singolo Birds Vs Worms (Hit Or Miss, 1997) contiene la ninnananna frenetica Every Penny Fed Car e due numeri blues: Worms vs. Birds (immagina una versiona lo-fi di Brown Sugar degli Stones) e Four Fingered Fisherman. Il lo-fi di Brock è sempre un po' troppo "lo-fi" giusto per il gusto d'esserlo.
L'interesse di Brockverso il lumperproletariat e le classi medie americane diventa sempre più mordente e diventa musica su The Lonesome Crowded West (Up, 1998). I suoi ritratti di derelitti, perdenti e sciocchi disillusi può ora contare sulle strutture proprie del pop orecchiabile (Polar Opposites), del folk pastorale (Jesus Christ Was An Only Child), del country-rock (Cowboy Dan) e addirittura del blues (Styrofoam Boots). Il gruppo fa anche rock, sebbene in modo goffo (Lounge, Doin' The Cockroach). La specialità di Brock rimane la canzone da strada (Out Of Gas, Long Distance Drunk, Truckers Atlas), un genere al quale potrebbe fare i più significativi aggiornamenti dal 1950.
Qualche outtakes appare su singolo, tra tutte Other People's Lives (Up, 1998) e Never Ending Math Equation (Subpop, 1998).
Building Nothing Out Of Something (Up, 2000) è una raccolta di singoli ed altre rarità.
While not one of their best albums, Moon & Antarctica (Epic, 2000) is a good introduction to Modest Mouse. 3rd Planet works as a generic ouverture to the band's musical psychodrama, replete with meek-neurotic interplay and suicidal lyrics. But Modest Mouse's skills at disorienting the listener are better summarized by the humbler Gravity Rides Everything, that braids an acoustic folk ballad and a raga-like strumming into a progressively noisier texture. A Different City and Paper Thin Walls are catchy and lively enough for general consumption, while the moody, desolate, noir music of Cold Part (hypnotic pace, romantic violin, Jim Morrison-ian scansion, guitar-bass doodling), the brief Syd Barrett-ian vignette of Wild Packs Of Family Dogs (childish refrain, cajun accordion) the metaphysical, Faust-ian country ballad I Came As A Rat are good specimens of their conceptual art.
Songs like Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes (disco beat, industrial dissonances, theatrical recitation, distorted rap, highway boogie), Life Like Weeds (permeated by Indian and classical influences) and the 9-minute The Stars Are Projectors (that spans generations of folksingers from Billy Joel to Neil Young and accelerates into a demonic bolero and a baroque fugue) are musical and poetic journeys. Modest Mouse are capable of changing direction within a song in a subtle way, a technique that they borrowed from progressive-rock (Genesis, Yes, Rush, Roxy Music) and adapted to roots-rock. Brock takes advantage of that technique to enhance the dramatic aspects of his stories.
The emotions, that have been brooding in dark, desperate songs like Dark Center Of The Universe (that builds up tension through an orchestral backdrop, a martial drumming and finally a mad shout against a hard-rock riff) and Alone Down There (a funereal flamenco shaken by sudden spasms) charge right at the end: Brock packs so much wrath and bitterness in What People Are Made Of that it sounds more like and indictment than a song.
The music, ever restless, is traversed by electronic noises (with a preference for A Day In The Life's vortex) that further acquaint the listener with the psychological depth of the songs.
Isaac Brock's side-project Ugly Casanova (featuring Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins, Califone's Brian Deck and Tim Rutili, Holopaw's John Orth) released Sharpen Your Teeth (Sub Pop, 2002), which is probably his most experimental album. Diamons On The Face Of Evil is a labyrinth of electronica, blues and folk (clarinet and mandolin engage in a derelict duet, "home-made" percussions are beaten feebly and a guitar weaves a casual middle-eastern motiv), whereas Pacifico (a gothic, emphatic dirge a` la Nick Cave, with monks' voices in the background) and Spilled Milk Factory (swampy blues shuffle, hysterical gospel call-and-response harmonizing, Beck fronting Captain Beefheart's band jamming with the Pink Floyd) are ballads for the future primitive.
The range of creative solutions is well represented by songs in perennial evolution such as Ice On The Sheets (a six-minute blues and funk work-out, enhanced by psychotic ranting and by a touch of Pere Ubu's modern-dance folly, that slowly slides into tribal dementia) and Smoke Like Ribbons (country affectations of slide and mandolin, electronic ghosts, and the Beach Boys' Good Vibration that surfaces from the mix). Not to mention the grand psychedelic finale of So Long To The Holidays, six minutes of intense mantra and sunny guitar licks and cosmic radiations.
Barnacles revolves around psychedelic whispers and sighs over a martial, Neil Young-ian pace, and is littered with post-industrial distortions and noises. Parasites unleashes a childish lullaby worthy of Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain against the backdrop of an epic horn fanfare and dischordanti guitar jamming, whereas Things I Don't Remember recalls Syd Barrett's surreal singalongs, with banjo and fiddle used as percussions. The tender serenade Hotcha Girls stands as an exercise in profane arrangements, pitting classical strings against John Cale-ish dissonance and vocal distortion a` la early Grateful Dead.
Best to appreciate the album's swooning vocal harmonies is Cat Faces, where voices meet like winds in the prairie and the instruments (slide, organ) sound like samples from another song.
Brock's least linear and least personal album could turn out to be his lasting masterpiece.
A whole group of stances seemed to harken back to the 1980s: the apocalyptic tone of March Into The Sea, the anthemic ska-punk accents of We've Got Everything and Invisible, and the vibrating rage of Florida and Education. Others seemed to reach for the sound of the early days (the thin Parting Of The Sensory, the neurotic vocals and deranged guitar Fly Trapped In A Jar, although soaring with a disco beat).
The novelty of the album is the eight-minute Spitting Venom, strummed on acoustic guitar before turning into a chaotic Captain Beefheart-esque blues and eventually decaying into shoegazing territory.
Alas, the album has several doses of fluff and songs that do not quite make sense. Either Brock tried (and failed) to prove that he is more artistically talented than Float On showed, or he simply packed this album with too many inferior songs that had been left in the drawer.
Origins
In 1994, Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green, Eric Judy, and John Wickhart recorded their debut EP, Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect?, at Calvin Johnson's Dub Narcotic Studios. It was released under K Records. John Wickhart played bass guitar on the EP. Then followed a single, "Broke", under Sub Pop that was recorded by Steve Wold (now better known as bluesman Seasick Steve) at Moon Studios. During this time, Modest Mouse also recorded their would-be debut album Sad Sappy Sucker, but constant delays caused the album to be shelved and forgotten (it was officially released in 2001).
[edit] Up Records releases
After moving to Up Records,[3] Modest Mouse put out two full-length albums and other recordings recorded at Moon Studios, including the 1996 LP This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. This album was produced and recorded by Steve Wold (at this time Wold was assisting in the recordings as well, but was not officially a part of the band). The next offering was Interstate 8, also produced by Wold. The 1997 album The Lonesome Crowded West (also recorded at Moon Studios, by Scott Swayze) turned out to serve as the band's breakthrough. The Lonesome Crowded West gained the band a cult following, and is now popularly considered to be one of the defining albums of mid-1990s indie rock. Prior to its release, the band had recorded the EP The Fruit That Ate Itself. In 1999, Up Records released a singles and rarities collection entitled Building Nothing Out of Something, which included the entirety of Interstate 8 except for the songs "Edit the Sad Parts" and "Buttons to Push the Buttons".
[edit] Signing with Epic Records
In 2000, Modest Mouse released The Moon & Antarctica, their first album on Epic Records. The album was more instrumental compared to their previous work, and this was partially due to Brock having his jaw broken during recording. Not knowing if he would be able to sing, he focused on making a more instrumental and experimental album.[4] The band enjoyed some success on alternative radio with the singles "3rd Planet" and "Gravity Rides Everything." It was critically well-received[5] including a 9.8 out of 10 score from online music magazine, Pitchfork Media.[6] It has subsequently gone on to receive further acclaim.[7] Brock has since released an album with his side project Ugly Casanova on Sub Pop. The band licensed "Gravity Rides Everything" for a commercial for Nissan's Quest minivan, a move that Brock has publicly acknowledged as blatantly commercial but necessary to achieve financial stability.[8]
In 2001, Modest Mouse released the EP Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks, a collection of unused songs from the The Moon and Antarctica recording sessions. In 2002, they joined Cake, De La Soul, The Flaming Lips, The Hackensaw Boys and Kinky on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour.
[edit] Mainstream success
In March 2003, Green quit the band after suffering a nervous breakdown; the official word was that he was quitting to work with his side project, Vells. The same year, he and bassist Eric Judy appeared on Adam Forkner's debut solo album, VVRSSNN. Green was replaced with two new members, drummer Benjamin Weikel (who also drummed for The Helio Sequence, as well as playing keyboard) and guitarist Dann Gallucci (who had been a member of Modest Mouse previously, and appears on Sad Sappy Sucker and The Lonesome Crowded West). On April 6, 2004, Modest Mouse released their fourth album, the platinum-selling Good News for People Who Love Bad News, which scored two hits with "Float On" and "Ocean Breathes Salty" (both of which they performed on Saturday Night Live on November 13, 2004[9]). The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Rock Album that year. Later that year, Green returned to the band, and Weikel returned to drumming exclusively for The Helio Sequence. Gallucci left the band in August.
Modest Mouse was mentioned by name in the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of MGM v. Grokster. Justice David Souter wrote that on the Grokster P2P network, "Users seeking Top 40 songs, for example, or the latest release by Modest Mouse, are certain to be far more numerous than those seeking a free Decameron, and Grokster and StreamCast translated that demand into dollars."[10]
[edit] Recent work
Jim Fairchild: current Modest Mouse touring guitar player- live in concertIn May 2006, Dann Gallucci (who had left the band amicably in September 2004) was replaced on guitar by Johnny Marr. The album, entitled We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank was released on March 20, 2007[11] after being delayed from December 19, 2006. The album was successful in being the first Modest Mouse album to reach number one on the US Billboard 200 charts, and spawned the hit single "Dashboard", as well as "Missed the Boat" and "We've Got Everything".
In issue 1045 of Rolling Stone magazine, Brock reported that his biggest priority is to finish a Modest Mouse EP; referring to the songs that did not make it onto Good News and We Were Dead. He says there are songs named "The Whale Song" and "Satellite Skin" as well as another song with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band.[12]
Isaac Brock says he will begin writing music for their next album during March. An update on the band's blog featured a picture of the band rehearsing new songs. The band had a tour with R.E.M. and The National in 2008 which ended in Atlanta.[13]
The band had begun a North American tour beginning in June 2008. The band returns to Florida for the first time since their November 2006 Bang Music Festival show where they were cut off stage early, with three shows in Miami, Orlando, and St. Augustine.[14] While an update on the Modest Mouse blog was subtitled catching up on some words for the next tour, it is in fact the lyrics to Heart Cooks Brain.[15] Modest Mouse recently finished their tour supporting We Were Dead after 2 years of promoting the record.
Modest Mouse released singles for the songs Satellite Skin, Autumn Beds and Perpetual Motion Machine were released in limited edition (a run of 4,000 each) vinyl 7 inches, featuring artwork by Joshua Mark Levy, J.Alex Stamos, and Natasha Wheat.
Jim Fairchild of Grandaddy and All Smiles replaced Marr as touring guitarist during the support of No One's First and You're Next, which was released on August 4 2009,[16] composed of unreleased tracks from the recording sessions of Good News for People Who Love Bad News and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.[17]
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