Label: Epic
Producer: Isaac Brock
Release Year: 2004
Listen: Spotify / Apple Music
It’s as if the Talking Heads and Tom Waits got together at a hash party with your redneck cousins. That’s the only comparison I can come up with when it comes to Modest Mouse’s music. An incredibly strange amalgam of styles accompanied by a lispy, hallucinogen-infused lead singer who might get confused with the manic depressive Daniel Johnston leads to a sound that can only be attributed to this particular band. This album continues an inevitable arc towards a poppier sound, and has produced their most accessible album to date. The Moon and Antarctica is one of my favorite albums of all time, so this one will have to be pretty special to top it–and it does on some levels but not on others. The songs are more cohesive, and the production terrific, and while I really do love this album, I can’t help but feel it doesn’t quite live up to their last album in terms of indelible songs and timelessness. In terms of pop albums, songs like “Float On” and the completely awesome “Bury Me With It” will be remembered on top ten lists at the end of the year, and one might even get some radio play here and there–and hopefully avoid being immortalized in a minivan commercial.
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