 Modest
Mouse -
The Lonesome Crowded West
CD
Review by Claude Iosso
Modest
Mouse promised a lot last year with a
first album that was dreamy and dramatic by
turns, a spirited argument for a neglected genre,
punk pop. On 'This is a Long Drive for Someone
with Nothing to Think About', Isaac Brock
bellowed and whined over beautiful guitar
harmonics.
Brock's band has
kept its pomise with The Lonesome Crowded
West (Up), a rawer product still packed with
catchy melodies. The 74-minute compact disc is This
is a Long Drive on steroids. The ranting is
more desperate, the sad songs more wistful and
the guitar often heavier and more assaultive.
With their
tortured vocals and songs that switch from sweet
to surging, the trio from Issaquah, Wash., has
invited comparisons to the Pixies, Built to Spill
and Talking Heads. Modes Mouse served notice that
they would go in a grungier direction with their
1997 ep, The Fruit that Ate Itself (K
Records). The boys dropped some of the shimmer
that marked their earlier work for a dirtier
guitar sound. They even pitched in some rap and
record-scratching.
Modest Mouse
embraces melody again on Lonesome Crowded
West, but they're certainly not
domesticated. Brock, always a convincing apostle
of Black Francis, has never sounded more savage
than in "Cowboy Dan" and "Doin'
the Cockroach," two of the album's
outstanding cuts. From the haunting
harmonics-laden opening of Cowboy Dan, Brock
bursts into a chant about a "major player in
the Cowboy Scene. He goes to the reservation,
drinks and gets mean. He's gonna start a
war." You feel the shots about to fire.
In their short
but prolific two-year recording career, Modest
Mouse's punk rages have always been balanced by
melodic yearnings. On the new record the songs
are six minutes are six minutes or longer, each
crammed with pretty as well as bitter passages.
Brock is an imaginative lyricist and he conjures
images that are powerful and evocative, even when
they are too bizarre to fully understand, as in
"Teeth Like God's Shoeshine."
"Here's the
man with teeth like God's shoeshine
He sparkles, shimmers, shines
Let's all have another Orange Julius
Thick syrup standing in lines
The malls are soon to be ghost towns
So long, farewell, good-bye."
Lonesome
Crowded West is not a perfect cd. Modest
Mouse's tendency toward excess produces
"Truckers Atlas," an energetic piece
that meanders into irrelevance over 11 minutes.
Still, with its passion and hooks, this is among
the best discs to come out this year.
Claude Iosso
reviews The Moon and
Antarctica, by Modest Mouse
Click here for
Claude Iosso's 1997 Modest Mouse Interview
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