Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse has never really lived up to the word modest. From its beginnings in the ’90s, Isaac Brock’s manic voice and acerbic lyrics tumbled over angry lo-fi guitars with a sense that he knew everything about the terrible world we live in and just decided to laugh about it. In the years after the band’s first major-label release (and arguably its best album) The Moon & Antarctica, Modest Mouse smoothed out the rougher edges in its sound and began to grow more bombastic, excessive and pop-minded with 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News and 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. These albums won many new fans, but they also left many older ones unhappy with the band’s pop transformation.
It’s been eight years since that last album, so the question remains: who is Modest Mouse now? Is Strangers to Ourselves worth the wait?
Well … it’s complicated. Despite the title, Strangers to Ourselves is definitely a Modest Mouse record. It’s caught in the difficult spot of attempting to straddle the line between its core style and newer ideas, to mixed results.
The new album finds itself showing the all-too-familiar signs of an aging band. Brock’s voice is softer now, staying at a low and steady range and only occasionally breaking into a higher yelp — the reverse of his usual strategy. It’s also probably too long and bloated in points — understandable given the long hiatus, but still not necessary. This album also includes what might be the band’s worst song, “Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL, 1996),” a darkly distorted song with a thundering dance beat about a killing spree nearly 20 years ago. It just seems very out-of-place and juvenile, with lyrics such as, “I’ve got my pistol in the car, uh huh/ I’ve got my stereo in the car, uh huh/ I’ve got my room key in the car, uh huh.”
All this to say, there’s definitely a sense of progression and change in Brock’s — and the band’s — outlook. Where once the members cynically dismantled existential questions as struggling indie artists, they’ve now achieved a good level of mainstream success. Strangers to Ourselves combines Brock’s go-to ideas about the finite nature of life and broadens them, blending them with his own life changes and all he’s witnessed in the two decades the band’s been alive. The band’s sound has never before incorporated this much dance music — take the disco beats of “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box” and the catchy “Lampshades on Fire.”
This one excerpt from “Lampshades on Fire” truly encapsulates the album’s central theme of humanity destroying Earth with its excess: “Well we’re the human race/ We’re goin’ to party out of this place/ And then move on.”
References to “ghosts of trees” appear in multiple songs, including the excellent single “Coyotes,” which features the most straightforward message about humanity’s destruction: “Mankind’s behavin’ like some serial killers/ Giant ol’ monsters afraid of the sharks.” With lines like, “We don’t belong here/ We were just born here,” it’s clear that Brock wants to get out before it’s too late. The old Isaac Brock was screaming in the dirt while the new one is laughing on a spaceship, flying high above a broken planet.
Other highlights include “Ansel,” inspired by the hiking accident that resulted in Brock’s brother’s death. It features such simple yet powerful lyrics: “The last time that you’ll ever see another soul/ Nah, you never get to know.” The aforementioned “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box” manages to be what the album was hoping every song would be: danceable with genuine Modest Mouse lyrics like “The world’s an inventor/ We’re the dirtiest thing it’s ever thought about,” and “Our predecessor left this box/ And something’s clawing around/ I think it really wants out.”
Despite the creaks and hiccups coming from an aging band probably past its prime, Strangers to Ourselves is still a Modest Mouse record and therefore a solid collection of some good songs written by one of indie rock’s legends. It manages to be thematically cohesive about humanity partying itself into oblivion, even if it’s not as lyrically sharp as some of their older albums. Modest Mouse isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and that’s a comforting thought. Even an average Modest Mouse record is better than a large percentage of everything else.
