Strangers to Ourselves is a very fitting title for Modest Mouse’s most recent studio album. The band from Issaquah, WA came back on stage with an ambitiously long record after a 7 year hiatus. The album in its entirety is composed of fifteen songs, each with a strained melancholy beaten into them and more than a hint of experimental production. Although at first the despondence and angst in the album are surprising, these qualities make sense after considering Brock’s potential feeling of irrelevance in the music scene after such a long hiatus.
The band is known for being slightly unreliable in terms of sound. Somehow they always manage to be recognized with enthusiasm from die-hard fans. Some songs on this album uncannily resemble their older breakthroughs (listen to “Lampshades on Fire” at 1 minute and then “The World At Large” at 50 seconds). Other songs seem to come out of thin air and strike hard.
“Pistol” is the premier example of a song striking hard and surprisingly. The song is unexpectedly heavy and angry. The bass is too much of a key a player in the song and the other parts of the song feel as if the equipment was accidentally left distorted by a previous band in the studio and Modest just ran with it. “Ansel”’s breakdown (about a minute and a half in) serves as a bridge between the density of “Pistol” and the routinely calmer verse-style of “The Ground Walk, with Time in a Box." At around two minutes through the song it relents to a chorus of several overlaid voices singing the bridge and is refreshingly comforting. “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box” is a higher, rougher course than the following “Coyotes” (the most acoustic and clear song on the album), but it does well as a lead into its disciple. Its vigorous drumming solidifies the ideas of bitterness and frustration that are weaved throughout Strangers to Ourselves. The bridge that “Ansel” makes with “The Ground” after “Pistol” helps create congruency within the album.
“The Best Room," a personal favorite, is a very upbeat, melodic exploration of experiencing insignificance and growing old. There’s a steady, comforting drum beat throughout the song and a very predicable pause for a bridge which nudges the listener with the smooth “don’t you know it’s hard feeling tired every time that you try?” and then becomes dynamic in it’s build to the heavy chorus which reads “the best room they have is the last room you want”. This one is a simpler song, but the calm riff before “to the empty balconies” is befitting of Modest’s sound and does guitarist Johnny Marr justice.
All the experimentation considered, their sound is consistently recognizable. It is an occasion, but every once and a while the band hits those chords and melodies in perfect coalition. Brock’s voice is, and has always been, moldable to the lead guitar’s vibe. And the lyrics, though unfortunately and sporadically scared off by various supplementary instruments, are scenic. They are missing certain subtleties maybe because co-songwriter and bassist Eric Judy was not a contributor to this album. Nevertheless, the songs are honest. Brock’s words are soulful, honest and candid. He has nothing to loose. For all its hills and valleys, it is a very brave record.
A few critics have claimed that this album is unlike Modest Mouse’s sound. That they stray, in this record, away from West Coast sounds. That they are no longer the band who pumped “Float On” and “The World At Large” into mainstream music, but now just a band struggling to catch the end of the wave their past successes have created. It has also been mentioned that the title of Strangers to Ourselves implies with reason that Modest has not found its way back to itself after the band’s break; that there are pieces of it that will no longer fit together and thus production trial and error was demanded of them.
Perhaps, though, they are presenting to us their fractured self as something that has always been.
The name of the band comes from a Virginia Woolf story, which reads "for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises."
Strangers to Ourselves sounds like an album created by people who dislike to hear their own praises. Who are sometimes timid and gloomy and, other times, fiery and dense. Who are maybe still unfamiliar with themselves, but learning by making mistakes. Who are definitely and honestly trying to figure themselves out again.
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