Also read: Cannes Ten titles to look forward to. From messy, minimalistic, aggressive punk to intricately arranged and perfectly layered pop extravaganzas, Modest Mouse can do just about anything. But their songs are almost always hook-filled treats that can reel in the fans. Their first album came out four years after the band was formed.
What made Modest Mouse stand out was their use of instruments such as the upright bass, cellos and mandolins, not common among indie acts at the time. This, and their tight compositions, gave the band a head-start that would win them critical acclaim and then some mainstream attention in the mids when Johnny Marr, the former guitarist of The Smiths, joined them for a while.
That dark mood was revisited more recently, in , when the band released Strangers To Ourselves , a set of songs about environmental and societal concerns. Some of the music is instantly catchy but some of the arrangements are complex and may need repetition to appreciate fully.
With their penchant for breaking formulae, Modest Mouse have always been an acquired taste, and the new album showcases their whimsical style well. The album opener, Fuck Your Acid Trip , sets the mood for the songs, optimistic and steeped in positivity. For long-time fans of the band, it is a refreshing change in mood.
Nearly 30 years is a long time for an indie band. Of course, there have been several changes. On The Golden Casket , for instance, many of the songs have a pop groove, and some, such as We Are Between , even have a danceable beat.
Modest Mouse have always flirted with mainstream success. This raises the question: what do you see at a Modest Mouse concert? Until last week, I had no clue. Friends had been trying to sell me on the Seattle-based band since the late 's, casually tossing words like "brilliant" and "genius" into the conversation. To no avail. While Modest Mouse's records were always technically impressive with flashes of real beauty, they ultimately came off as self-indulgent: ambitious but sloppy, intelligent but over-intellectualized.
Too often, it seemed, those fragile harmonies and intricate melodies would meander into mere experimentation for experimentation's sake, or collapse outright into dissonance. Maybe this was a genuine expression of the band's vision. Maybe it was the calculated product of a neo-punk ethic that equates accessible pop music with evil. Who cares? For that matter, what's the difference?
Their stuff left me cold. Great songs. Never had the urge to hear them. The band's live show, friends said, would change my mind. It did not. Ansari is correct that no one fakes ejaculation on stage at a Modest Mouse concert. The near-capacity, sweaty, very white crowd of 4, ranged from high schoolers to graying alterna-dads, with most fans hovering in their late's.
The album debuted at the top of the Billboard and was eventually certified gold in the U. The band's cover of "That'll Be the Day" appeared on the tribute compilation Rave on Buddy Holly , while their touring extended into Work on the band's sixth album included the construction of their own Ice Cream Party studio, shelved collaborations with Outkast 's Big Boi and Nirvana 's Krist Novoselic , and the recording of two albums' worth of songs.
Appearing in March , Strangers to Ourselves was a moody, sprawling effort that reached number three on the Billboard in the U. For June 's The Golden Casket , Modest Mouse recorded at Ice Cream Party and in Los Angeles with producers Dave Sardy and Jacknife Lee , opting for an electronic-tinged sound that reflected the more optimistic outlook on the themes of fatherhood, technology, and mortality they explored on Strangers to Ourselves.
Shortly before the album's release, Fairchild and Molinaro amicably left the band. AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully. Blues Classical Country. Electronic Folk International. Jazz Latin New Age. Aggressive Bittersweet Druggy. Energetic Happy Hypnotic. Romantic Sad Sentimental. Sexy Trippy All Moods.
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