How do, how do you do, my naaame is Manches! And I’m bringing you Drownedinsound’s first genu-ine bona-fide Modest Mouse listening club - THIS CLUB IS DEFINITELY LISTENING!
I’ve been meaning to do this for absolutely ages but, in true Modest Mouse fashion, life and death in all their richness presented themselves and delayed the simple task of starting a thread. Reading the 33 1/3 book on The Moon and Antarctica this week finally got my arse back in gear. Here’s the schedule I’m thinkin’ at present…
25.11.24 - This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About
02.12.24 - The Fruit That Ate Itself
09.12.24 - The Lonesome Crowded West
16.12.24 - Building Nothing Out of Something
23.12.24 - Sad Sappy Sucker (kind of cap off the indie era and cover a curio over lazy Christmas)
06.01.25 - The Moon and Antarctica
13.01.25 - Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks
I first got into Modest Mouse because I heard ‘Float On’ on MTV2 while flicking channels during an ad break (I was probably watching The Simpsons, Lost, or Futurama) but I think it was listening to ‘Dramamine’ on definitely now-forgotten “streaming platform” RadioBlog (whatever it was called) that really had me going “oooohh-kaaaayyy”. I didn’t get this album until quite a bit later; I excitedly found my CD copy (complete with the annoyingly difficult-to-remove sticker along the edges of the jewel case) on a trip to Birmingham with my sibling’s German exchange partner (she wasn’t as delighted as I was).
This album was kind of the gold standard for that American lo-fi sound that I was obsessed with at the time – I was looking for something scratchy and DIY and homemade, but I hadn’t quite managed to get my head around big reference points like Smog yet, and was still a bit too square to handle everything that The Glow, pt. 2 was doing. That super-trebly RIINNGGG is still a simple but amazing guitar tone that I never tire of when I’m playing myself and, outside of that, there’s so much about this band that arrives just fully formed*: Isaac’s voice (both literal and his perspective), the ability to make a one-hour-plus indie rock album FOR THEIR DEBUT that really doesn’t feel anywhere near as much of a slog as it, by rights, should.
One of many highlights: ‘Beach Side Property’ – the cadence of “I got wood legs and bowed legs and no legs at all” and the general stop-start loud-quietness of it. Still remember copying this album for my friend and him absolutely gushing to me about THOSE STOP STARTS
