 Mouse Triumphs on the
Moon
Modest
Mouse
The Moon and Antarctica
CD
review by Claude Iosso
When I heard Modest Mouse had signed with a major
label, I wondered if the band would moderate its
quirky sound. With keening guitar melodies and
Isaac Brock’s desperate vocals, the Issaquah
trio had won a devoted local following since its
1996 debut EP, Interstate 8 (Up). Fans
will be glad to know that the band has maintained
its angry charm without a lick of compromise on The
Moon and Antarctica (Epic).
Brock spews with
less testosterone than he did on the last release
of new material, 1997’s The Lonesome
Crowded West (Up), but new hooks leap
from his guitar and his isolationist, sometimes
apocalyptic view of the world is as weird as
ever.
The bleakness of
Brock’s lyrics is belied by the album’s
rich texture and joyous melodies. Modest Mouse has employed violins and
synthesizers before, but they seem to knit into
the songs better on Moon and Antarctica.
Drummer Jeremiah Green and bassist Eric Judy are
rock-solid as they hold the compositions together
through shifting rhythms.
There are pretty
songs such as "3rd Planet,"
"Gravity Rides Everything" and
"Paper Thin Walls" that feature
Brock’s delectable cascades of notes. There
are urgent and mesmerizing dark ones, including
"Dark Center of the Universe," "A
Different City" and "Alone Down
There."
A highlight for
me is a winning funk number, "Tiny Cities
Made of Ashes." I bobbed my head back and
forth to the rhythmic, absurdist lyrics: "So
we’re drinkin drinkin drinkin
coca-coca-cola, I can feel it rollin right on
down, Oh right on down my throat." Modest Mouse even dips into the
ambient trend with the nine-minute epic "The
Stars Are Projectors."
MM moves away
from the slow-and-sweet/fast-and-furious song
structure that has marked most of its best known
tunes, which makes Moon and Antarctica
easier to listen to than Lonesome
Crowded West was. However,
Brock’s lyrics, which always resonated
despite only skating on the edge of
comprehensibility, win him the crown as the dark
prince of desolation.
"I wanna
live in a city with no friends or family,
I’m gonna look out the window of my color
t.v., I wanna remember to remember to forget you
forgot me," he cries in "A Different
City." In "3rd Planet," Brock
sings, "Everything that keeps me together is
falling apart, I’ve got this thing that I
consider my only art of fucking people
over." The vein of self-hatred continues in
"Dark Center of the Universe"--
"Well it took a lot of work to be the ass
that I am, and I’m really damn sure that
anyone can equally easily fuck you over."
It’s hard
to say whether the nation will embrace the clever
contrarians from Issaquah, but they’ve done
their part with a tasty slice of
rock’n’roll on Moon and Antarctica.
This is no sellout, though it should sell out...
Modest Mouse in
the Class of 2000
Claude Iosso's
1997 profile of Modest Mouse
Claude Iosso's
review of The Lonesome
Crowded West
Visit the premier
Modest Mouse Fan Site
Also at Pandomag.com
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