Isaac Brock has issues. Big, throbbing drug-addled demons--that much is clear from the tortured music of his indie-legend band Modest Mouse. All the toxic backwoods destitution of his hometown Issaquah, Washington, along with a few Pixies albums and fistfuls of narcotics, have permeated his brain.
What leaks back out is usually the stuff of a bona fide bard--surely one of the most honest and sharpest lyricists in music today. Modest Mouse songs linger restlessly in all-night diners, drive a thousand miles straight off a cliff or orbit a planet--all while musing with icepick-sharp wit on questions of life, death and the big G. Not to find enjoyment in some poor sack's suffering, but such beautiful suffering!
But as his new solo project, Ugly Casanova, shows, Brock's knobby legs won't walk him too far without his band. Sharpen Your Teeth forgoes some of Modest Mouse's eccentricities, making room for more of Brock's own. Without the wicked song structures, catchy cyclical riffs or Jeremiah Green's propulsive, syncopated drumming, Ugly Casanova relies entirely on Brock's desolate musings and warped folk sensibilities.
The latter is interesting at first: the poison seeds that sprout occasionally on Modest Mouse albums are spread all over this effort. Creeping guitar twang and whiny noises that hover in the background give the album a sense of unease that barely lets up.
It's creepy-weird, but not quite creepy-groovy, and sometimes it's just creepy-annoying: the grating "Spilled Milk Factory" might be sung by toothless Oompa-Loompahs in Leatherface's Chocolate Factory.
It shouldn't follow that Brock's lyrics would also suffer without the presence his bandmates, but something's missing. The most promising tune, "Things I Don't Remember," is dulled by his stupidest words to date: "There was dressed up alligator/there was blood on the piano/disco-dancing neighbors/born in mashed potatoes." "Parasites" is a great melody that carries a chorus straight out of a Saturday Night Live satire that never will be: "The parasites are excited when you're dead/eyes bulging, entering your head/and all your thoughts, yeah-they ROT!" One listen to it and all other Modest Mouse songs wither a little bit in comparison.
About half the songs are actually decent, but the bleary specter of side-project mediocrity hovers throughout. For Modest Mouse fans, pick up the recent Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks to hear Brock's haunted lyrics accompanied by pulsating and devastating musical arrangements. Or better yet, catch Modest Mouse at Cat's Cradle.
But, for the sake of all singers' unnecessary solo, don't Sharpen Your Teeth.
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