Friday Quote— Modest Mouse
The well-written preview for the upcoming Modest Mouse show in The Inlander caught our eye. Joel Hartse argues that despite the much ballyhooed “King Rat” music video, directed by the late Heath Ledger---even Grist weighed in on the anti-whaling message---mouseketeers shouldn’t mistake the band as political, saying the songs are “purposeful in their purposelessness,” listing summer jams “Float On” and “Dashboard” as prime examples. 
It’s an interesting view but he should’ve pushed listeners to reach farther back in the bands catalogue for real purpose.
Always surprising to the kidz bop, Modest Mouse has been kicking around since 1992. They hailed from Issaquah, a sprawling, cul-de-sacked nightmare which formed a dystopian and claustrophobic vision on earlier records.
Witness their quaint commentary on consumer culture: “Let's all have another Orange Julius/Thick syrup standing in lines/The malls are the soon to be ghost towns/So long, farewell, goodbye.” That left quite the impression on DTE’s wide-eyed teenage self in the Pacific Northwest as Wal-Martians attacked, nature was destroyed for bankrupt golf courses, or, as the funny lyrics say in “Novocaine Stain,”… “More housing developments go up/Named after the things they replace/So welcome to Minnow Brook/And welcome to Shady Space/And it all seems a little abrupt/No I don't like this change of pace.”
On the aptly titled “Lonesome Crowded West,” frontman Isaac Brock spoke of, and perhaps to, “modest mouse-like people,” a line he cribbed from Virginia Woolf. These were characters like Cowboy Dan, who goes to the reservation, drinks and gets mean because he “didn’t move to the city/the city moved to me/and I want out desperately.” Brock was stricken with rural dementia and this violent composition speaks for inhabitants who were displaced by growth while everybody looked the other way. (Read HERE for America’s sacred places losing the battle to the bulldozer.)
Of course, Brock comes off as a surly, idiot-savant. Maybe it’s a facade. Maybe not. He’s notoriously prickly in interviews, never answering questions about his lyrics which is great because it gives music nerds like Hartse and DTE are own questioning interpretation of the meaning. Modest Mouse has softened with age becoming more simplistic and heavy-handed due to unforeseen success. (Their overproduced last album was available as a Best Buy exclusive and included a bonus Xanax pill for bitter old cranks like us who remember them good ol’ days.) However, it's good news for Spokane fans that songs like “3rd Planet,” “Gravity Rides Everything,” and “Neverending Math Equation” have appeared on recent set lists. All contain brilliant insight into our natural surroundings. Check them out. They might just change your life.
