Modest MouseWhen it comes to indie rock royalty, it's hard to go past Washington outfit Modest Mouse. Of course, Isaac Brock – the band's co-founder and sole continuous member – would entirely reject such veneration.
Forming in 1993 in a town south of Seattle, Modest Mouse arrived against a ubiquitous backdrop of grunge, yet eschewed the popular sounds of the time in favour of an emotional blend of indie rock and energetic post-punk.
A pair of records on the indie label Up gave way to a signing with Epic in 2000, with their fourth album – 2004's Good News For People Who Love Bad News – serving as a commercial breakthrough thanks to their single Float On.
The band would continue on in spite of the newfound fame, bringing The Smiths' Johnny Marr into the mix for 2007's We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, and cementing themselves as the aforementioned indie rock royalty.
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Eight years passed before Strangers To Ourselves arrived in 2015, and another six years elapsed before 2021's The Golden Casket dropped. Since then, there's been a bit of change. Founding drummer Jeremiah Green passed away in 2022, resulting in a line-up shift, including three new members who are yet to appear on a studio recording.
However, that's all changed this week with the release of Modest Mouse's eighth album, An Eraser And A Maze, which arrives today.
In typical Brock fashion, however, these past five years since The Golden Casket have been busy, but there was never a particular moment at which a new record became the focus. Rather, it was a continuous process from before the previous album.
"I actually had started writing Picking Dragon's Pockets before The Golden Casket was even written," Brock recalls. "I liked the song so much, it just wasn't ready for that record. So I held off on doing that.
"Then, the thing is, as we were finishing mixing The Golden Casket, we were just on the porch killing time and brain cells, and we started fucking around with Absolutely Necessary Never in a really, really, really rough form.
"Then I think I took maybe a month or two, and then I went up and hung out with [producer] Jacknife Lee and started working on some of the songs," he adds. "We worked on them, we got about three songs done, and I think maybe two of them made it on this record."
Diehard fans of Modest Mouse might remember how, back in 1997, a series of songs began to find their way out into the world by a mysterious project named Ugly Casanova.
Officially, the story goes that a musician – named Edgar E. Graham – cornered Modest Mouse with a batch of songs, which Brock soon recorded as a way to hopefully coax the reticent Graham out into public life proper.
An album arrived in 2002, and so too did the fact that this was actually just a musical persona created by Brock. However, Ugly Casanova once more re-emerged from the shadows earlier this year with a live performance in February.
This may potentially have something to do with the fact that the initial songs crafted for An Eraser And A Maze were intended to be a new release from this long-dormant project.
"What happened was that I turned in six songs to the label I was on at the time, Epic, and they kind of pushed the plate back and they're like, 'Meh, we don't think so,'" Brock recalls. "I was like, 'Oh, shit. That's a bummer.' They didn't really like the direction I was headed for some reason, which is interesting, because they never really had any opinions before."
Realising there was no point in pushing these tracks if Epic weren't into them, Brock figured that the best course of action was to put them out under the Ugly Casanova name before once again returning to the Modest Mouse moniker.
"In a very nice way, we talked to Epic, and were just like, 'You know, we've been on this label for 20-some years, maybe it's just time we parted ways,'" he remembers. "And they were really cool about it, meaning not in a 'horror show, major label story' sort of way that you'd expect.
"It was nice. They were like, 'We want nothing but success for you, so if this isn't working, do what you do,'" he adds. "So then they were Modest Mouse songs again, and here we are."
It does raise a question, then: if these songs which began life as Modest Mouse tracks were easily pivoted for release under the Ugly Casanova moniker before making a swift return, is there actually any difference between the projects? Is it basically a 'rose by any other name' situation?
"That's actually a really fair point," Brock admits. "Actually, it's always been that way. Any song that I've written could've been a Modest Mouse song. I mean, Ugly Casanova was just born because Eric [Judy, co-founding bassist] had just had a kid or a second kid or something like that, and wasn't able to be touring or doing any of that, and I think Jeremiah had some other thing going on.
"So I was just like, 'Oh, I should do another project, keep myself busy.' And so that's why Ugly Casanova exists at all. I was just like, 'I'll just play with whoever,' you know? And when people would come and stay at my house on tour, like Bright Eyes or something rolled through, we'd jam, and maybe a song from that would've been used.
"It was just a good excuse to play with some artists that I really like," he muses. "Maybe that'll be the difference when I do an Ugly Casanova record, 'cause I actually did start writing one specifically – I started writing with Tim Rutili again from Califone.
"So there's no reason something can't be a song unless it also sort of belongs to someone else, I guess.”
The newfound freedom that Modest Mouse experienced as a result of the split with Epic (who had every one of the band's major releases since 2000), would undoubtedly have been a refreshing one.
But while some artists might take it as an opportunity to stretch their legs musically, Brock is far more pragmatic. "I was going to make the record I was going to make, no matter what label I was on," he states.
"But being on my own label, it's a little scarier," he adds. "But not much because we work with a great distributor. We still kind of get all the perks of a major label without having to basically give all our money to the label – whatever money there is anymore, to be honest.
"Jesus, the splits are not kind on those major label deals, man," he adds. "And so it's nice to not feel like I'm completely kinda on the hook for whatever this costs, and that's good… and terrifying."
While Modest Mouse's earliest releases were independent cassette creations, EPs and singles soon followed via Up Records and K Records, the latter founded by Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson.
While one would undoubtedly assume a shift would take place – both internally and externally – upon the signing to a major label, Brock admits that "as far as what – as musicians – we were going to bring to the table, that didn't really alter that at all."
"But being on an independent label, like K or something like Up back in the day, I knew which store to walk into and the conversation I wanted to have, and I knew who was going to help me with the artwork," he states. "We're all in the same room here.
"On a major label, like, particularly on The Golden Casket, I didn't even know who the fuck I was supposed to talk to about getting things done. And one of the people wasn't particularly invested in it and was just kind of assigned to our project and shit.
"I think the only time I met this guy, he came to the studio once on a trip specifically to meet up with me, said hi for like five minutes, and then went and hung out with people that made more sense to him," he continues. "So it's nice to know who I'm supposed to be talking to now."
There's a nice sense of clarity at play when it comes to An Eraser And A Maze. It feels like a Modest Mouse album at its core, and it doesn't obfuscate the main musical message by crowding it in unnecessary instrumentation or overhyped production. Though still ambitious and expansive, it maintains that crucial DNA of Modest Mouse which is still rooted in a sense of simplicity.
There's every reason for it to be less than simple, however. After all, a press release for the record refers to the theory in physics in which "the idea that past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, and that the passage of time itself is an illusion," suggesting this refers to the way in which Modest Mouse have crafted this record.
Similarly, a sense of simple pragmatism is at play in how Brock recently told an interviewer there was no chance of the group disbanding in the wake of Green's death. "I didn’t have a question as to whether I was continuing as Modest Mouse, because that’s not an option for me," he stated,
But while it's clear that there's a sense of simplicity in Modest Mouse at the current time, yet the music manages to continuously feel progressive, one might imagine there is something of a tension in how Brock attacks his musical process. As he explains, that's far from a problem.
"The only thing I'm ever aware of is if I accidentally find myself trying to sound like something," he explains. "Like, if I say this song is sounding too Neu!, prog rock, krautrock, or whatever and that's what I was trying to do, it just seems like I'm fucking doing a Modest Mouse cover of a style. So I'll try and mess that up.
"Also I don't care for guitar solos. Like, classic guitar solos kind of drive me nuts, or 'riffing', if you will. So any time I've written a part nowadays, I tend to end up putting it through a lot of different pedals to make it sound as wrong as possible."
One could wonder then, if Brock finds himself heading down a certain territory when it comes to stylistic similarities and it simply sounds like a Modest Mouse version of that, what would then happen if he approached a Modest Mouse song the same way? Would it be the most Modest Mouse song possible, or a poor imitation of himself?
"I'm not good enough to do anything but make Modest Mouse songs," he quips. "I'm not really trained in the ways of others, so I'm stuck making Modest Mouse-sounding even if I do actually try and go full krautrock and stuff.
"When I was writing with Tim Rutili recently, doing some writing for Ugly Casanova, we wrote this song and I really liked it, but I was like, 'Oh man, it just sounds like I'm trying to do Motown.'
"Then I gave it a couple weeks off and listened again," he adds. "Then I was like, 'No, you don't know how to do Motown, man. It just sounds like Modest Mouse with a little Motown.'"
While there aren't yet any solid plans for Modest Mouse to make a return trip to Australia any time, Brock does tease that fans can potentially look towards early next year as the date for their first local trek since 2023.
In the meantime, however, a new record from Modest Mouse gives both fans and band the chance to reflect on how things have evolved over the past three decades. As it turns out, whether it's those formative releases or the latest album, the modus operandi has pretty much always been the same.
"I know that when I was younger, just because of what music I liked and listened to, I tried writing weird songs and also Built To Spill songs," Brock reflects. "But as I've gotten older and been in this longer, I don't necessarily have to think too hard about it anymore. I just let it happen."
Modest Mouse’s An Eraser And A Maze is out now.
