Modest Mouse
The Lonesome Crowded West
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Rating: 8.9
For the uninitiated, Modest Mouse hail from the Seattle area and sound
like a jammier Pixies if Black Francis had Attention Deficit Disorder.
This Mouse can't be but so modest, releasing two double albums (including
The Lonesome Crowded West), two EPs and three singles in just over a
year. Such quantity implies a confidence not quite realized until this
album. Here we find a little of everything -- a turntable adding scratches
to the conventional rock sound of "Heart Cooks Brain", a
down-by-the-river fiddle on "Jesus Christ was an Only Child", a few pop
nuggets and several longer pieces with a half-dozen tempo changes.
Thematic glue binds the musical sprawl, with stream- of- conciousness
lyrics touching on the familiar Mouse topics of suburban decay, the
lonely road, confusion and dislocation. Frontman Isaac Brock's lyrics are
like a glass table at an SNL cast party, with finely-chopped lines
pointing in all directions: "My brain's a cliff/ and my heart's the
bitter buffalo" ("Heart Cooks Brain"); "I'm drowning upside down/ my feet
afloat like Christ's" ("Styrofoam Boots"). When a band's oldest member is
twenty-three, the active word is usually "potential." Modest Mouse,
however, have arrived.
-Mark Richardson