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.

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.”