(Epic)
Signing to a major label has long been
seen as signing a death sentence for your creativity. The artist
narrowing their gaze and refining their sound for mass appeal, rather
than rather than pushing out and exploring. Modest Mouse proved that
rule wrong with their major label debut. 2000's The Moon &
Antarctica was their most ambitious album yet, sprawling off in
multiple directions and abandoning their lo-fi sound for a number of
studio experiments that were no more palatable. Songs obsessed over
the afterlife and the cosmos whilst tracks like the grand star-gazing
Stars Are Projectors, still one of the bands defining moments,
revealed an ambition that could be described as anything but selling
out.
Their debut This Is a Long Drive for Someone with
Nothing to Think About
set out lead songwriter Isacc Brock's M.O. of mixing the literate
with the emotional delivered with a vocal range that went from a half
spoken croon to a Frank Black-style feral yelp whilst the band's
sound was defined by limitations of being a three piece recording in
small studios. When Good News for People Who Love
Bad News came out in 2004 the band made a push towards the
mainstream, with cleaner production and a fuller sound. The move paid
of for the band as the album went platinum in America, a rare
achievement for an indie rock band, spawning big singles like Float
On but still kept much of the band's charm intact.
It has been eight years since the last
Modest Mouse album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank's
nautical-themed rock and in those intervening years rumours persisted
of abandoned recording sessions and collaborations with the likes of
Big Boi (apparently this is still going to happen). Despite setbacks
and problems, the bands sixth album Strangers To Ourselves
has finally emerged and despite the time between releases feels
familiar right away.
Strangers To Ourselves certainly
isn't short of this bigger catchy moments either, the album's first
single Lampshades On Fire seems to strike a similar tone to the bands
big singles like Dashboard and Float On with a refrain of ba ba
ba's it's not afraid of going after a simple hook to pull you in.
The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box will surely be released as a
single at some point, scratchy guitar lines scrap against Brock's
erratic, tumbling vocals before the track brings in almost Steve
Reich xylophone rhythms before ending in a reversed guitar solo. It's
an example of the bands willingness to experiment in a studio going
right, but unfortunately it's one of the only good examples of it on
the album. Elsewhere, there a few too many studio tricks thrown in
that just feel unnecessary.
Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)
seems like a misstep, mining the kind of jagged, angry funk that the
band have developed over the last few albums. The song focuses on the
dark true story of a serial killer but it's easy to to get distracted
by the needless production including a baffling pitch-warping vocal
effect that Brock uses through the song.
Lines like “If there's some point
to this then which one is mine” on Pups To Dust see familiar
lyrical themes like life and death carry over into these songs, not
always with the same subtlety as in the past but Brock can still
deliver them with a real sense of weight. Strangers To Ourselves
gets away with mixing a lot of different styles, unabashed pop
sing-a-long Wicked Campaign and ramshackle camp fire folk of God Is
An Indian And You're An Asshole shouldn't work but really do. Sugar
Boats is a rock song for a strange and twisted circus led by a bouncy
bass line and squealing horns. It isn't a complete success but is a
little better than it should be thanks to it's nervous and manic
energy.
Maybe it is a victim of it's eight year
gestation; the album covers a lot of styles but never manages to pull
these threads together as a whole. For all the tracks that work there
are more than a few that just pass you by, tracks like the opener
Strangers To Ourselves and Coyotes just never give you enough to
latch onto. Given all the talk of abandoned recordings, it could have
come out much worse. Strangers To Ourselves still feels
disjointed and it's runtime of nearly an hour doesn't help. It may
feel unnecessarily dense and disparate but amongst the varying
offerings the album does have enough high points to keep Modest Mouse
fans happy - especially if they've enjoyed the bands 2000's output -
and reminds you why they can be a special band.
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