Modest Mouse are making music worth boasting about

Modest Mouse’s first album after a baffling eight-year silence may be their best yet, writes Ed Power.

Tue, 17 Mar, 2015 - 00:00

Ed Power

ISAAC BROCK sounds as if he’s just tumbled out of bed. Modest Mouse’s songwriter-in-chief speaks in the creaky whisper of someone far older than his 39 years and will often lapse into unexpected pauses, as if his train of recollection has crashed into the buffers. He ought to be filled with coffee and placed gingerly beside an open window.

“I’m in the swing of it dude,” he says of returning with Strangers To Ourselves, his first Modest Mouse album in eight years. “I mean, I’m never not in the swing of it. People wonder where I’ve got to. I’ve just been busy — busy with other s**t.”

Modest Mouse used to be a big deal. In 2004, after a decade of honest striving on the American alternative circuit, they broke through with the double-whammy of hits ‘Ocean Breathes Salty’ and ‘Float On’ (the riff from the latter was the introductory jingle to Matt Cooper’s Today FM news broadcast).

Modest Mouse were part of a proud continuum in underground American rock. A decade before, REM had charted precisely the same course, from the college scene to the MTV playlist.

LATE SUCCESS

The National would follow their lead, breaking through when the band members were all in their 30s and sufficiently grounded to regard success as a bonus, not a raison d’être for making music.

But Brock is complicated and did not look upon a chart-topping album as a blessing. He’d been happy in the margins, releasing dense, knotty records without having to sweat about airplay or what anyone at the label thought. He had wended his own way, thankful for the freedom obscurity brought.

Nor was he over the moon about being with a major label (since 2000, Modest Mouse have been signed to Sony). What got to him was that until ‘Float On’ became a radio hit on the back of an appearance on Saturday Night Live, nobody at the record company seemed even aware Modest Mouse were on their books. The band had become a phenomenon entirely by accident.

“At least on independent labels, people would pretend to be excited about the stuff you were putting out,” he says. “When we went to a major, nobody except the guy who had brought us on board even knew we were with them. It was a lucky thing there were people out there listening to us — otherwise, our albums would have been shelved. By the time of Good News For People Who Love Bad News, they had fired our A&R guy and the art department women we worked with. There were two people at the label who had heard of us. That it worked at all was a complete fluke.”

New Song: “Of Course We Know”http://t.co/V1GeT3RvRo

New tour dates, pre-order “Strangers to Ourselves” at
>> http://t.co/Yor2TD7Bb8 <<
— Modest Mouse (@modestmouseband) March 3, 2015

SMALL-TOWN BOY

Brock had a peripatetic upbringing. He was born in small-town Montana and raised by a hippy mother. By the age of 11 he was living on his own (the family trailer had flooded, forcing the clan to temporarily split up).

Religion was a backdrop — his mother belonged to a Christian sect called The Grace Gospel Church (linked to David Koresh’s Waco Davidians) Brock recalls being asked to speak in tongues as a young child, an experience that has palpably informed his apocalyptic lyrics.

“I didn’t feel the spirit of the f**king rushing through me,” he later said.

“I definitely felt awkward. I thought. ‘What’s the best way to make this stop?’ So I ripped off some words from Mary Poppins and said them fast, and the deacons are going, ‘Yeah, all right!’”

Appearing on MTV and playing arenas were agreeable to Brock. The big bonus was that he was able to pay off his mortgage. After years of living out of a tour-bus that had shot suspensions, to finally have a roof over his head was worth more than any amount of critical acclaim or fan love.

At the same time, it’s clear mass popularity somewhat mangled his thought process. The band’s next album, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, was shambolic even by Modest Mouse standards, though it did reach number one on the American charts and came as part of Johnny Marr’s three-year stint with the group.

That album was released in 2007 — in the creative silence that ensued, many people wondered if the group had broken up.

“I was never entirely aware of the delay being a big deal,” says Brock. “It turned into eight years pretty quickly.

“It wasn’t until I was doing interviews that I thought ‘S*** man — that actually was a pretty long gap. There are kids who got into us aged 14 who are 22 now and haven’t heard a new record’.”

WORTH WAITING FOR

Strangers To Ourselves was worth the wait. Catchy, twitchy, endlessly propulsive, there are grounds for arguing it is Modest Mouse’s finest LP since the early 2000s.

Brock is pleased it has received a positive response — after all, a great deal of sweat and heartache went into the writing and recording. “Often, struggle is a good thing,” he says. “If it’s too easy it would feel I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile. I want it to feel like a lot of work. Songs never end up landing quite where I intend them to. That doesn’t mean I’m ever going to stop trying to hit the target.”

Brock has strong opinions about what makes a good record. He recoils from the idea that rock music has to be perfectly assembled. If something is too flawless, where is the excitement?

Rock and roll ought be scrappy at the margins, full of fascinating rough edges and unexpected quirks. Otherwise, the risk is that you will end up with something dull and soulless.

“I try not to get too hung up on high quality,” he says “If your record is overly glossy, it’s hard to love. That’s why we keep pulling the rug out from under ourselves. When your music is excessively polished, people can’t relate to it. So I always try to make it sound as gritty as possible,” Brock says.