Modest Mouse

One Liner: Delightfully weirdo alternative rock

Wikipedia Genre: Indie rock
Home: Seattle

Poster Position: 3
Both Weekends.
Saturday at 6:20 at the Honda Stage

Thoughts:  Modest Mouse is a weird band for me.  I know I'm supposed to love them, and some of their songs are really great.  But in general, they've never clicked for me.  I got to see them live last year, opening for The Black Keys, just before the pandemic shut everything down, and it just mainly felt like I was being yelled at the whole time.  Here is what I said about the show at the time:

"I was excited to see MM - if I've ever seen them before I don't recall it (but part of me feels like I've caught them at ACL before) - and I have a friend who loves them.  The music sounded great - I really enjoyed the semi-weirdness of their groove and the three guys all blasting percussion effects into the tunes - but the vocals sounded godawful.  Just fully washed out and unintelligible.  The guy literally could have been mumbling the word "pineapple" every time he opened his mouth, for all I could tell.  Which is too bad, because I'd like to like those guys.  Also, at one point I decided to run out for another beverage, and when I came back to my row, the single guy at the end of our row didn't move for me when I walked up with both hands full of drinks.  He was straight up asleep.  Had to bump his knee with my hand and he sheepishly jumped up.  You know the show is scintillating when someone can rack out during it!  Anyway, I was bummed about this part of the show."

On the other hand, "Dashboard" is a super fun song that makes me want to dance all over the place.  So, I know that there is something here for me, if I can just unlock it.

Modest Mouse is indie rock that became popular without me in the early oughts.  I knew their first hit or two ("Float On" and "Ocean Breathes Salty") and generally liked those songs well enough, but felt intimidated by the rest of the music to the point where I never really gave them a try.  After a concerted effort to really try it out, I have now listened to their three most recent albums a handful of times each and feel like I get it.  There are three categories I think their songs fall in to: (1) excellent funky rock that is built to be fun ("Float On," "Ocean Breathes Salty," "The View"); (2) more simple, introspective tunes ("Bukowski" "Strangers to Ourselves"); and (3) weird stuff where they let their inner freak out of the cage ("Bury Me With It," "Dancehall," or "The Devil's Workday").

Their most popular tracks are type 1, such as "Float On," "Lampshades on Fire," "Dashboard," and my favorite from their 2015 album Strangers to Ourselves, "The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box."  18.3 million streams.

Creeptastic video, yo.  This isn't in their top ten on Spotify, so not especially popular track from MM, but I dig the funky beat and tight cadence of the odd lyrics. That song is a good time.  And I feel the same way on the other funky, fun tunes in the catalog.

Of type 2, "The World at Large," from 2004's Good News for People who Love Bad News is the top hit, with about 52.9 million listens.  But I think "Missed the Boat," from 2007's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is the better tune.  Serious album titles, right?  42.4 million streams.

Kind of a Shins/R.E.M.-type sound going on in that track.  It is another good one.  I think that 2007 album is my favorite of these three.

And then comes the type 3's, none of which are represented in the most popular songs on Spotify, and which just throw me off of my enjoyment for the albums.  On the 2015 album, its definitely "Pistol" that fits this bill, which sounds like a bad Ween song.  But I'll give you "The Devil's Workday" to try on for size.  4.8 million streams.

Right in between the lovely "Bukowski" and the funky "The View" on the album, with this squealing, toneless annoyance of a song.

Also, because I can't just NOT give you their most popular song - this is "Float On" with 251.2 million streams.

Good fun.  Still in heavy rotation on the radio 27 years later, and for good reason.

On the overall review of their music, if you remove those type 3's from their albums, they make good music and should be a ball to see play live.  This would be a good band to get a mixtape of from my sister, like she did with Phish 20-something years ago.  I doubt they'd even play that weird garbage in their shows.  They remind me of the Decemberists, as a group who fires out albums that aren't necessarily built for pop success, and are thick with wordy lyrics and few and far between sing-along hits, but when you dig into them, you'll find something you like.  And by the way, my experience with them only scratches the surface.  

And they put out a new album here in 2021 - The Golden Casket.  The weird thing is that I've heard the initial single a good number of times on the radio, and I honestly didn't know it was this band.  For real, close your eyes and listen to the first sing - "We Are Between" - and tell me who you hear.  5.2 million streams.

Its the Chili Peppers, right?  It totally sounds like some weird Stadium Arcadium B-Side where Anthony Keidis is getting deep about his place in the world and Flea is trying out a new baseline.  The vocal tone of "Hello Hello Hello!" is totally Keidis.  Also, that video is hella depressing.  BUT - the tune itself is funky and bouncy and I dig on it.  Of course, the album itself opens with a #3-type tune - "Fuck Your Acid Trip" is a bad song.  I'd say overall that the album isn't great.  That one single is good, but as I plow through the rest of it I don't hear anything that really hooks me in the way the older discs did.

The band came about in 1992 in a town called Issaquah, Washington.  Which is just a fancy way of saying part of Seattle.  And home to Costco!  Isaac Brock was the formative member of the band, and he's the only guy who has been in the band the whole time.  Drummer Jeremiah Green is the closest, but he took a break in 2003.

I'm a big fan of this quote: The band licensed "Gravity Rides Everything" for a Nissan Quest minivan advertisement, a move that Brock has publicly acknowledged as blatantly commercial but necessary to achieve financial stability. Regarding the commercial, Brock stated, "People who don't have to make their living playing music can bitch about my principles while they spend their parents' money or wash dishes for some asshole."

They have 7 other albums from before Good News for People Who Love Bad News (1996's This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, 1996's Interstate 8, 1997's The Lonesome Crowded West, 2000's The Moon & Antarctica, 2000's Building Nothing out of Something, 2001's Sad Happy Sucker, and 2004's Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again).  That is a prolific output.  

Good band - I'll keep listening to them.  And I'm sure as hell going to their show at the Fest.  Let's do this thing.