Modest Mouse
The Lonesome Crowded West
Up Records, PO Box 21328, Seattle WA 98111, up@subpop.com
Release Date: October 21, 1997
Be forewarned: if you need to accomplish anything productive, do NOT play this record. When you put The Lonesome Crowded West on for the first time, you will spend the next 74 minutes in a semi-conscious trance, a faint smile the only outward sign of emotion. But inside your head, you'll be deep in a journey of mental gymnastics. Modest Mouse is a tornado of a ride.
How the hell Modest Mouse manages to maneuver their complex, twisted rhythms and riffs into such edible pop hooks is beyond me. On paper, these herky-jerky tracks should be tripping all over themselves. But just when you think the trap will finally snap on their tail, Modest Mouse slips into quiet contemplation, or jumps into Built to Spill-style grandioseness.
No doubt about it, Isaac Brock grew big and strong on a healthy diet of early Pixies. The vocal style of The Artist Formerly Known As Francis is tattooed all over Brock's yelps, croons and screams. Check out the back-of-the-room vocals in "Heart Cooks Brain" and "Cowboy Dan," both of which are cradled in Santiago-style single note guitar lines (though you certainly won't find the dj scratching that punctuates "Heart Cooks Brain" on Surfer Rosa!).
But don't call Brock a rip-off -- his lifting is entirely excusable. First, because such a tiny fraction of the human population is even capable of imitating this physically taxing style, but more importantly because he embraces what he learned and molds it to fit his own, well, voice. His phrasing is damn near brilliant, completely off-kilter and unexpected, but almost nursery-rhymish in its sing-along glory -- a perfect match for his lispy inflection. On rockers like "Convenient," it's explosive. On quieter moments like "Trailer Trash," it's downright gorgeous.
Perhaps the scariest thing is that there's room for improvement. Lonesome spans a whopping 74 minutes without a clunker, but several tunes sound like extras that would normally be saved for an outtake record. Their inclusion makes the album a bargain, but it also takes away from the record's overall identity. Yeah, its nit-picking, but suffice it to say that Modest Mouse may have a masterpiece up their sleeve.
-- Jon Carson
carson@outersound.com
