REVIEWS:
Post your comments about Modest Mouse
(reviewed by Mike Bryant)
HIGH POINTS: 3rd Planet, Gravity Rides Everything, Dark Center of the Universe, A Different City, Paper Thin Walls, I Came As A Rat, Lives. LOW POINTS: Perfect Disguise, What People Are Made Of.
When a band jumps from an independent label to the majors, uncertainty and apprehensive anticipation is sure to follow. Fans will wonder whether the band will “sell out” or not (or some fans will immediately assume the band has). The myth is that by jumping to the majors, bands will tone down (or do whatever they have to do to) their music in order to reach a wider audience. And in doing so, their music will start to suck. Nevertheless there are some bands that use the major label money in order to make their music more intricate and to do things they would not have been able to do on an indie label. Modest Mouse is one of those bands. They have become even more interesting and strange now that they are on Epic Records.
Upon first hearing the album, it is immediately apparent how musically diverse it is. From angular post-punk to campfire sing-alongs to sweeping pseudo-prog soundscapes to Talking Heads, Modest Mouse takes all of these disparate elements and add them to their indie pop sound. Their songs do not mix these elements though. The style may even abruptly change after three or four songs. This manages to keep things interesting on this hour-long album. After three or four songs that sound the same, they’ll throw a curveball at the listener. However The Moon And Antarctica does has a cohesive feel to it. The songs may be different, but the overall sound of the album stays the same. Plus, most of the songs flow into each other adding to this unified feel.
The opener, “3rd Planet,” sounds like your usual acoustic indie pop song. Some people think Brock’s voice is annoying (he does have a wide range though), but his voice only gets annoying when it is layered with other vocal takes. I love this song! It is a pretty understated, yet sublimely beautiful pop song. The lyrics are great also. “The third planet is sure that they’re being watched, by an Eye in the sky that can’t stopped. When you get to the Promised Land, you’re gonna shake the Eye’s hand.” “The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight long enough you’ll end up where you were.” I could go on. These lyrics may sound pretentious, but Brock mirrors these with more introspective ones, “everything that keeps me together is falling apart.” Throughout the rest of the album, themes such as loneliness, life, death, and the afterlife are dealt with. In “I Came as a Rat,” Brock pontificates on God, “It takes a long time but God dies too, but not before he’ll stick it to you.” I’m listing the highlights (not all the lyrics are great. Example: “right wing, left wing, chicken wing” Eh??). He never seems to be trying to make a grand statement though. He sings about these things matter-of-factly, as if he knew as much about them as his own record collection.
Leaning towards the easily accessible side, “Paper Thin Walls” is a jaunty, foot-stomping pop song. “Gravity Rides Everything” is a pleasant acoustic number with backwards sucking sound effects and restrained raga guitars. “Dark Center of the Universe” also makes use of swirling raga guitars and an exhilarating epic buildup towards being a freewheeling rocker. Studio wizardry is evident on many of the tracks. Modest Mouse had obviously been listening to OK Computer a lot. On every track there is either a guest guitarist, violinist, keyboardist or, many times, all of them at once. The actual music for each song is almost always excellent. Interesting guitar riffs and bass lines weave in and out, disappear then reappear as another riff entirely. The album is especially suited for listening to driving. Why? Because the songs are constantly moving. “All songs move Mike, what are you saying?” Well, because you can guarantee that a song will not stay the same musically. Some abruptly change, while others change more subtly. But you can always count on a song not following a set verse-chorus-verse pattern. Riffs are constantly spiraling, new ones appear, and song structures change mid-song. For all of this, Modest Mouse still manages to keep the songs accessible, and sometimes even catchy. However I would like for more of the songs to rely on actual hooks than just interesting chord progressions. Take “The Stars Are Projectors” for example. It almost cracks 9:00 minutes in length. These nine minutes are intriguing enough as the music switches from tense, jerky, storming rocking to slow acoustic melodies to interweaving guitar buildups, and then implodes into a sea of violins. But after the song is over, it is not memorable and the listener does not feel exhilarated at all. My response is, “That was pretty neat Modest Mouse, you get a pat on the back for that.” Admiring gesture, but no real connection here. Modest Mouse work better when the music is more personal. Also, this song is the most representative of the album title. Much like the song itself, Antarctica and the moon are vast; but there’s not that much to them. They wisely follow this epic with a short 1:45 campfire sing-along about savage dogs going on a rampage in the neighborhood. “But they will receive their reward.” Is this a metaphor about heaven and judgment? It may as well be as every other song here deals with such matters.
My second misgiving about the album is that sometimes the studio effects overload the songs. I am mainly talking about the vocals though. On just about every song, there are echoing noises, twangs, reverberations, plunking sounds, and knocks. Still, most of the time these complement Modest Mouse’s sonic textures and landscape. For all of these studio tricks, they never make the album seem too dense. If The Moon And Antarctica could be called dense, then the reason would probably be the inaccessibility of some songs. What makes these tracks inaccessible is because of: a) lots of interesting stuff going on, but this doesn’t really affect me, or b) the vocals are layered and have weird effects in place on them. Brock’s yelping voice has a wide range, and does not annoy this reviewer at all. But on certain tracks, his vocals are layered with separate vocal takes that usually have him singing with a lower register. Was there really a need for this? On the funky Talking Headish “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” the backing music is really cool, but it’s annoying how the vocals are layered. Yet again on “Alone Down There,” Brock’s regular singing voice is paralleled with him talking in a creepy, demented whisper. This is used once more on “Life Like Weeds.” If his intent was to unhinge us a bit, then he succeeds. But this needlessly taints already interesting songs.
These are only minor quibbles, because a good few of these tracks are brilliant. “Lives” starts out as a pessimistic twanging alt-country song then morphs into a sympathetic acoustic slice of melancholia complete with violin. It also has great lyrics. The bite of, “No one’s going to play the harp when you die” changes to knowing empathy, “It’s hard to remember, it’s hard to remember to live before you die.” The song then ends on the cynical, “If you could be anything you want, I bet you’d be disappointed am I right?”
Some have called this a concept album about “the moon and Antarctica,” but the only song that could fit that bill would be the aptly titled “The Cold Part.” This sprawling song paints a cheerless picture of a detached person saying his goodbyes to the world, (“I step down as President of Antarctica, can’t blame me. So long to this sad part of the world”). The music has a scenic quality as if it wasn’t recorded in a studio, but was captured while driving on some open road with a sweeping mountain landscape in the background.
The Moon And Antarctica is a very ambitious record. And not very many bands today are willing to be this ambitious. Does it fulfill these ambitions? Not totally. Modest Mouse tends to overreach on several songs. On the other hand, there are not that many real low points on the album as every song is interesting in some way (except for maybe the boring filler of “Perfect Disguise” and the go-nowhere rocker “What People Are Made Of”). It is also an emotional album (as all great albums should be). Emotions vary from bitter and cynical to forlorn and reflective. The album is consistently interesting, but maybe not consistently satisfying. It has some wonderful moments though. All in all, The Moon And Antarctica is a welcome mix of the accessible and the difficult, the personal and the grand.
Post your comments / reviews for this album
Index | Main band/artist reviews page