In
my teen years, Modest Mouse was a name I recognized, but other than the
occasional radio tidbit of “Float On,” their music never really made its way to
me. It is only in the past year that I started exploring their catalogue, and
only then after the incessant and insistent recommendations of two of my bandmates.
At first, their eclectic sound palate was too much for me to stomach, but soon
I couldn’t get enough of the eccentricity with which they approached their art.
A few months ago, I began spinning Strangers
to Ourselves, their newest full-length, and while its fifteen completely
unique songs come as no surprise, I am still reeling from how cohesively those
songs fit together as a whole.
It
is a feat in itself to include fifteen fully-explored tracks on an album, but in
Strangers to Ourselves, Modest Mouse
collects an amazingly diverse palate of sounds and shapes them through the machine
of their musicianship. Although most of the compositions are structured around Isaac
Brock’s distinctive guitar melodies, their driving force comes from the fluid
drumming of Jeremiah Green; his shuffling dance groove moves the lead single
“Lampshades on Fire,”[1] while his crashing cymbals
coalesce effortlessly with the screaming guitar lead in “Be Brave.” And while
Isaac’s guitar snaps loud and proud in tracks like “Shit in Your Cut” or “Ansel,”
just as often he shares that treble space with keyboards and textures, even
blending the two timbres into one melodic image for the album’s eponymous opener.
With
their plethora of exotic instruments, Modest Mouse works hard to make each song
on Strangers to Ourselves a unique
listening experience. As Isaac puts it, “one thing that we consistently do is
inconsistently write types of songs. There’s no one way about it for us.”[2] Every tune is approached
from a different angle or with a different energy: “Coyotes” rocks a gentle
acoustic feel, “Wicked Campaign” is loaded with humming guitar and reverby
vocals, and “Sugar Boats” rollicks about on a manic gypsy piano riff. The
groaning dance of “Pistol” is entirely inane on first listen, but the maddening
dark vocals and wretching guitar coda paint a schizoid picture that
epitomizes the lyrical perspective of serial killer Andrew Cunanan.[3] The band is fearless in
their sonic endeavors, using every resource available to create exclusive
atmospheres for each tune.
Modest
Mouse’s willingness to wander between genres while remaining catchy is
admirable, a quality owed in no small part to Isaac’s ear-grabbing hooks. While
almost every tune on Strangers to
Ourselves features some aspect of pop sensibility, no track works that
sensibility harder than “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box.” With this tune,
Modest Mouse takes all the tropes of popular music and puts them to the test:
the song grooves on for over 6 minutes (twice as long as the most daring Top 40
tune), and while they maintain a danceable beat for most of that time, the band
can’t resist devolving into pure noise for a few bars in the bridge.
Even
Isaac’s endearing and fun vocal melody, which is practically married to his
guitar, is a vehicle used to put all of humanity in its place as a group of bad
party guests on a beautiful planet.[4] By twisting all the right
ingredients, “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box” defies the very conventions
it is built around, reinforcing Isaac’s statement that, despite their regular forays
into ear-friendly music, “we’re not a pop band. I’m not sure what kind of band
we are, and I like it that way.”[5]
From
an instrumental perspective, Strangers to
Ourselves is truly all over the place, ranging from soft to loud, scream to
whisper, and everywhere in between. But in spite of their disconnect in sound,
these fifteen tracks are unified by dominant and thorough lyrical themes. With
the exception of perhaps two tracks, the record explores some aspect of
humanity’s relationship with the planet, specifically our abuse of it. Isaac
constantly refers to humans as “strangers” or “tourists,” even bluntly naming
us as “giant ol’ monsters” who behave “like some serial killers” in “Coyotes.”[6] In “Pups to Dust,” he
asserts our dissociation with the line “We don’t belong here, we were just born
here,” and explores our proclivity to skew our self-image: “The way we feel
about what we do is by who has watched us.”[7] Even with the very title
of the record, Isaac uses his writing to brutally pull back the curtain on our
true nature, forcing us to account for our very presence in this world.
One
song that heavily explores this theme of estrangement from our own home is “TheTortoise and the Tourist.” Amid crunching bass and a squealing guitar drenched
in warm reverb, Isaac regales the parable of an eternal tortoise with a shell
“covered in jewels” that knew “the world through all its histories / and the
universe and its mysteries.” When the tortoise meets a man and offers him
infinite wisdom, the human instead slaughters the tortoise before walking off
“with a song on his lips,” the jeweled shell secure under his arm. Isaac’s tale
in no uncertain terms highlights the greed and ignorance of man, who wanders
through his life blissfully unaware of the destruction left in his wake,
treating this life like a trivial vacation when in fact this is all he has. With
“The Tortoise and the Tourist,” Modest Mouse takes on the role of an elder spinning
a dark fairy tale, in hopes that the moral of the narrative will leave its mark
on future generations.
With
its multifaceted instrumentation and deep lyrical themes, it is hardly a
surprise that Strangers to Ourselves
took so long to see completion. Aside from having to fund the endeavor themselves,
apparently it took Modest Mouse three tries to get the recording sessions off
the ground, with most of their two previous attempts (one including Krist
Novoselic on bass, and the other featuring production from Outkast’s Big Boi)
being scrapped or shelved.[8] On top of that, the band
went through four producers total during the recording process, and also spent
considerable time trying to find a replacement for former bassist Eric Judy,
whose duties were ultimately split among members Russel Higbee, Tom Peloso, and
Lisa Molinaro.[9]
[10]
But
as one spin will tell you, Strangers to
Ourselves is a record well-worth the wait. Amid its eclectic sounds and
wavering tempos, this record is stuffed with the heartfelt intention of a group
of musicians who, despite missteps and lineup changes, continue to amaze and
innovate with their music. Modest Mouse affixes keen writing to a plethora of
sonic arrangements and ideas, giving their fans new and old a listening
experience that is original, honest, and most importantly, a ton of fun. Strangers to Ourselves is an odyssey of
sentiment and song in itself, but also a sign of things to come from this act,
and I for one am beyond excited to follow their journey.
Tunes to Check Out:
1) The Tortoise and the Tourist
2) Pups to Dust
3) The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box
