The indie veterans are calm and sweet at the same time.
He’s a pilot, sings Isaac Brock in “Picking Dragons’ Pockets”, the opener of this album. There’s a bit of truth to that, because Modest Mouse always kept an overview and cleverly navigated through the different eras of the indie age. A lot happened in the band’s 30-plus years. Thanks to their hit “Float On,” the Americans were for a while part of the cultural canon of the “OC California” socialized millennials, and Johnny Marr was also part of the lineup for a few years.
After the death of drummer Jeremiah Green, Brock is the only remaining founding member, and in a few moments you can hear this long journey. It’s not that Brock sounds exhausted, but rather that the songs exude a certain serenity. “Life’s A Dream” is the name of one of the most beautiful, it comes with a choir and reverbed guitar loops and sounds like a room in the four corners of which different people play different melodies, but always meet somewhere.
The “Dogbed In Heaven” rocks itself as a crooked shanty and full of background hum through all sorts of thoughts of finiteness. Elsewhere, for example in “Rotten Fruit”, a certain unrest creeps in, but it is so cleverly rhythmic that you still want to dance to it straight away. Towards the end there is the “Song About Nothing”. “Sing along!” an exalted Brock shouts in our faces. You’re actually more likely to order something like that if the audience already knows the material. But even if the urgency of the old albums isn’t always achieved, these new songs open a door that’s fun to step through.