Modest Mouse
The Moon & Antarctica (Epic)
Playing Sept. 28 at Exit/In
After two albums and a singles collection of songs about driving through the vast, unmanned spaces of the American West, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock has discovered two more desolate landscapes to explore, putting them in the title of his band’s lovely, imaginative third LP. Although few songs on The Moon & Antarctica are specifically about frozen tundras or lunar expeditions, Brock’s echoing guitar patterns and Möbius-strip lyrics evoke the feeling of staring ponderously at endless nothing; the versatile rhythm section of bassist Eric Judy and drummer Jeremiah Green gives Brock a firm launching pad from which to muse.
A major-label budget has enabled Modest Mouse to spend more time in the studio with producer Brian Deck, and to experiment with arrangements and orchestration. The result is a more lively, more compact, and more fully realized record than either of the band’s first two droning epics. Modest Mouse borrows unapologetically from prog-rockers like Rush, post-punkers like Joy Division, and even draws on elements of alt-country and white funk—all in the name of roaming through the uncharted territories of rock ’n’ roll and keeping diaries of what the experience does to one’s head.
The varied approach to similar subject matter reaches its fruition on tracks like “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” in which the sudden shifts from deadpan drone to screeching noise underscore the song’s references to repetitive violence. Elsewhere, on “A Different City” and “Life Like Weeds,” Brock sings about being transfixed by television and about being irritated by a lover; in both cases, his band’s ability to apply hypnotic layers of drone and wave-like tempos accentuates his evocation of frustration. Modest Mouse’s music has suffered in the past because of the sameness of Brock’s vocal stylings—halfway between enraged square-dance caller and depressed rapper—but the singer has modulated his approach a bit to match the inventiveness with which he and his bandmates are deconstructing popular music.
What’s it all about? A line from “3rd Planet” gives a clue: “The universe is shaped just exactly like the earth / If you go straight long enough, you end up where you were.” Modest Mouse’s songs have always tended to be caught up in loops. Two of their best early singles (collected on the very fine Building Nothing Out of Something) are all about the non-Disney “circle of life,” if you will: On “Interstate 8,” Brock sings, “I’m on a road shaped like a figure 8 / I’m going nowhere but I’m guaranteed to be late,” and on the mission statement “Neverending Math Equation,” he sings about how the “plants and the animals eat each other.” The Moon & Antarctica contains several songs that continue this theme, including the catchy “Paper Thin Walls,” in which Brock describes our voyeuristic tendencies by singing about “them watching me watch them watch me.”
At the core of this nightmarish, perpetually elliptical vision is a rather touching analogy for life and how we live it—always repeating and always returning, but also always feeding each other. And the band’s swirling, droning music—more engaging now than ever—is the appropriate backdrop for the message. Brock and the rest of this trio are making the soundtrack to a long journey and warning their passengers that the ride may be never-ending. There’s no destination here, only further travel.
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