Elvy McCrudden explores the mark Modest Mouse has left on indie rock 25 years after the release of The Lonesome Crowded West.
You don’t get a lot of bands like Modest Mouse. If you only knew them for their radio hits, you might mistake them for another one of those endless bands that seem to crawl out of the indie rock ocean. But there’s so much more to Modest Mouse; their approach to music is so inventive, so sincere, so electric. Though their music output has slowed down to a near halt in the past decade, with only two albums having been released since 2007, the late 90s saw them at their creative peak, and there’s no better representation of this than their monolithic masterpiece, The Lonesome Crowded West.
This album is a monster. At seventy-three minutes and fifteen tracks, it seems impossibly daunting at first glance, but the pacing is so tight, so finely tuned, that even in its sparsest moments, it never loses momentum. Riddled with the anxieties of increasing urbanisation and disillusionment with the West, The Lonesome Crowded West emerged in 1997 at the tail end of a music scene lost to time. Modest Mouse always made it clear that they were from Issaquah, Washington; frontman Isaac Brock wanted to make it clear that they weren’t from the Seattle post-grunge scene or the Olympia post-hardcore scene, despite the proximity to both. Honestly, I can’t blame them; you can tell by the way that Brock writes his riffs and how Jeremiah Green plays those drum grooves that they were eager to carve out their own identity.
Just listen to the opener, Teeth Like God’s Like Shoeshine, and you’ll see what I mean. And what a title! Who else would write a song like that? This song perfectly encapsulates what’s so great about this album. The song starts with this grimy, suffocating guitar riff, full of indulgent string bends and messy hammer-ons – it’s Brock at his most invigorating. His vocals are just as intense, with his voice shrill and piercing, and the lyrics perfectly balance between being panicked and playful. All this is perfectly accented by Green’s drums and Eric Judy’s bass – it’s a force to be reckoned with.
“We meet the titular man with 'teeth like God’s shoeshine' and get references to strip mall staples like Orange Julius as Brock critiques America’s obsession with commercialism and urbanisation.”
After about a minute and a half, the song breaks down into a classic Modest Mouse jam with a mix of palm mutes and power chords. This evolves into the beautiful arpeggiated chorus; Brock can’t resist his harmonics, stripping the song back to its most minimal whilst the lyrics are at their most poignant. We meet the titular man with 'teeth like God’s shoeshine' and get references to strip mall staples like Orange Julius as Brock critiques America’s obsession with commercialism and urbanisation. The song then reaches its climax, and everything comes together – the angular riffs, the brutal honesty of Brock’s lyrics, those intense dancey drum grooms that Green is always eager to break into – and the song ascends to another level. It’s the anthem to a doomed West and makes for one hell of an opener.
The album takes so many twists and turns, while never losing their distinctive voice. Right after Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine, we get the far more mellow Heart Cooks Brain, a gentle meditation on the conflict between rational decisions and actions based on emotion, with fantastic lines like “my brain’s the burger and my heart’s the coal”. Convenient Parking and Polar Opposites make for fun alt-rock tunes that could nearly pass for conventional, with contagious hooks and a sweet balance between tight jams and relaxed guitar noodling. Bankrupt on Selling is heart-wrenchingly sincere; Brock simultaneously yearns for some long-lost lover whilst also criticising corporate greed. We even get Modest Mouse at their most playful with their comedic barn burner Shit Luck – “this plane is definitely crashing!”, screams Brock, as the band launches into a barrage of shrill guitars and heavy drum grooves. Though the recording is rough, the electricity is palpable.
Modest Mouse’s subconscious obsession with travel seeps into the album, just as it did with their debut, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. Tracks like Truckers Atlas stem heavily from the long drives the band would take. In interviews, the band often recounts the trips they would take in Brock’s van, modified to contain storage on the roof and a sofa in the back. The track also displays Green’s fantastically bouncy drums, which betray some of the band’s Talking Heads influence. The break into a long, mostly instrumental jam between Brock, Judy and Green captures the monotony of long journeys on the road, but with just enough additions and (occasionally, wonderfully) accidental flourishes to keep you hooked.
Modest Mouse wouldn’t achieve mainstream success until seven years later, with the release of their fourth studio album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, but even at the time of The Lonesome Crowded West, they were making ripples in the music scene. Built To Spill’s Doug Martsch complimented the band, calling Modest Mouse “the perfect rock band” and claiming Brock to be “an amazing singer”. Even indie rock giants like Elliott Smith liked them, with Smith himself describing them as ‘very inventive’. When even titans like Elliott Smith like your music, you know you’ve really got something good going.
“I believe that the unpolishedness that the album boasts is key to this feeling of sincerity; you go on this remarkable journey with this quirky little band from Washington state, and though you’ve never met them, you feel like you know so much about their fears, anxieties and personalities.”
As this album turns twenty-five, it leaves me here wondering how Modest Mouse got everything so right. The guitars are so spiky and angular, the recording quality is so low, and the singing is certainly an acquired taste, but it all comes together so well. By the time Styrofoam Boots/It’s All Nice on Ice, Alright comes around, I catch myself feeling weirdly sentimental, even as Brock erratically shouts that “it’s all nice on ice”. I believe that the unpolishedness that the album boasts is key to this feeling of sincerity; you go on this remarkable journey with this quirky little band from Washington state, and though you’ve never met them, you feel like you know so much about their fears, anxieties and personalities. Their later work isn’t without its golden moments, but the bombast on albums like We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, in my opinion, misses the point of what was so captivating about The Lonesome Crowded West. Even in its most minimal moments, the big wide West didn’t feel quite so lonesome.
Elvy McCrudden
Edited by Roxann Yus
Cover image courtesy of Modest Mouse via Facebook.
Comments