Band: Modest Mouse Album: The Lonesome Crowded West Release Date: 10/7/1997 Length: 74:24 Label: Up Rating: 8.0

Track Listing

1. Teeth Like God's Shoeshine (6:52)

2. Heart Cooks Brain (4:00)

3. Convenient Parking (4:07)

4. Lounge (Closing Time) (7:00)

5. Jesus Christ Was an Only Child (2:32)

6. Doin' The Cockroach (4:19)

7. Cowboy Dan (6:12)

8. Trailer Trash (5:46)

9. Out Of Gas (2:30)

10. Long Distance Drunk (3:40)

11. Shit Luck (2:22)

12. Trucker's Atlas (10:55)

13. Polar Opposites (3:28)

14. Bankrupt On Selling (2:50)

15. Styrofoam Boats/It's All Nice On Ice Alright (6:52)

Review

From the top of the ocean / Yeah

From the bottom of the sky / Goddamn

Welcome to The Lonesome Crowded West. Your tour guides for this trip through a desolate area of decay and confusion are the indie-rock trio Modest Mouse. Don't let the name deceive you, however, as these boys are about as modest as your average Britney Spears music video.

This breakthrough 1997 album showcases some of the band's boldest musicianship, as they tackle issues of social isolation, religion, technology, and more within 75 of the most bizarre yet thought-provoking minutes I have ever spent listening to music.

For the uninitiated, Modest Mouse could very well be one of Washington's last great hopes. Graduating through their musical career from little independent rockers to finally reaching a major label with their last full length album, The Moon and Antarctica (1999), the band has evolved into one of the most thought-provoking bands people either love, or love to hate.

On the way to God don't know

My brain's the burger and my heart's the coal

I'm trying to get my head clear

I push things out through my mouth I get refilled through my ears

The Lonesome Crowded West is perhaps the best example of why you either really like Modest Mouse, or wish to never hear of them again. The album consists of strong, steady drumming by Jeremiah Green, Eric Judy's beat-keeping bass, and erratic, exciting, and sometimes backwards-playing guitar from lisping lead singer Isaac Brock. In my opinion, it is Brock's voice that makes Modest Mouse so intriguing to listen to. He simply sounds like a man with a lot of thoughts running through his head. However, his angst-filled lisp is what can make or break Modest Mouse for most listeners.

Soon the chain reaction started in the parking lot

Waiting to bleed on the big streets

That bleed out on the highways and

Off to others cities built to store and

Sell these rocks

The album begins with Isaac screaming the very words written at top of the review. It is from this moment forward that you're transfixed into hanging on his every word. Not because what he's saying is particularly brilliant, but because, at the very least, it's pretty damned interesting. From there the album moves into the slower "Heart Cooks Brain" seemingly to provide the listener with proof that this album isn't fifteen tracks of screaming. Indeed, it is anything but that, but it does get louder again.

She was going with a cinematographer

Everyone knew that he was really a pornographer

They went down to the dance and grind

And everybody was feeling fine

She was talking with syllable lisp

And everybody she knew was gonna get the twist

And they all went down and did the porcupine

And everybody was feeling high

On the next track, the 'Mouse' explores the ridiculously comical commercialization of every street in America with "Convenient Parking". The tail woven is a dark and sad one, but the sarcastic tag line, that there'll be convenient parking, alludes to the fact that Brock hasn't lost sight of the silliness of it all.

Working real hard to make Internet cash

Work your fingers to the bone sitting on your ass

I know now what I knew then

But I didn't know then what I know now

After the bleak look at urban life in the 21st century, we're given a light-hearted song about relationships. The track has a frighteningly quick beat on it, and again the imaginative lyrical storytelling by Brock and company help to draw the listener right into the album even moreso than they already were.

That track, "Lounge (Closing Time)" also proves to be a bizarre prelude to the next track, the acoustic "Jesus Christ Was An Only Child", every bit as tongue-in-cheek as the name implies. A song that isn't so much about religion as is it about giving the listener a change of pace, it may be a bit out of place on the rest of the album, but it's still a decent song.

You're walking down the street

Your face

Your lips

Your hips

Your eyes

They meet

You're not hungry though

The next track is a personal favorite of mine, "Doin' The Cockroach". The song opens with Brock pondering heaven and hell behind a guitar that is both steady and irrational at the same time. These are the songs that make me love Modest Mouse. Until hearing this album, I'd never heard guitar like this before. The way the sound breaks in and out, the unique sound of the distortion, it has sucked me in and I haven't returned since.

Well, Cowboy Dan's a major player in the cowboy scene

He goes to the reservation, drinks and gets mean

He's gonna start a war

He hops in his pickup, puts the pedal to the floor

And says "I got mine but I want more"

The next song, "Cowboy Dan" provides another contrast on the record. The light-hearted "Doin' The Cockroach" is seemingly a smattering of random observations by Modest Mouse, while "Cowboy Dan" angrily explores the ideals of a man who is thrown out into a new world he didn't want a part in. The mixed emotions of this fictional John Wayne are also evident in the song itself, as it darts from loud, harshly-sung vocals to a dreamy guitar rhythm from time to time. It's also one of the longer tracks on the album, clocking in past the six-minute mark, and at the halfway point, the album's purpose takes hold. While the album as a whole contains a lot of different ideas, the main motif explored in the disc is unwanted change. Changes happening all around that can't be stopped, but don't have to be obeyed.

Eating snow flakes with plastic forks

And a paper plate of course, you think of everything

Short love with a long divorce

And a couple of kids of course

They don't mean anything

"Trailer Trash" returns the album to a slower pace, but is just as bleak as 'Dan' before it. Love is a very touchy subject to write about. When written about poorly, it comes out as one absent-minded cliché after another. Modest Mouse explores love as the less fortunate see it, and they do it with a style and grace no one could match. Depressing? Most certainly. But the message is worth listening to.

Out of gas

Out of road

Out of car

I don't know how I'm going to go and

I had a drink the other day

Opinions were like kittens

After "Trailer Trash", we're treated to the odd two-minute ditty "Out Of Gas." A song that is short on ideas and lyrics, but packed with a decent enough beat that you'll probably be humming it for the next week.

Hang it up now or never

Hang it up again

Doesn't seem like anything you're saying or doing or doing

Is making any sense

"Long Distance Drunk" is the next track on the album. An album that clocks in at just less than seventy-five minutes certainly doesn't need any "filler"-type songs, and yet we're treated to three minutes of absolutely nothing. I still am not sure why.

This plane is definitely crashing

This boat is obviously sinking

This building's totally burning down

And my, and my

And my heart has slowly dried up

"Shit Luck" unfortunately follows the trend of the last two tracks, this time offering up a two minute song with exactly four different thoughts. The quote offered above is the entire song. It's a song with a passion that is undeniable, but I still don't feel like it was something I needed to hear. It does prove to be excellent music to break things by, though.

I'm going to Colorado

To unload my head

I'm going to New York City

And that's in New York, friends

I'm going to Arizona

Sex on the rocks, all warm and red

Thankfully, it is with the ten-minute "Trucker's Atlas" that the band and the album return to prior form. Starting off with a hypnotic drumbeat, the song's title pretty much says it all. It is, in essence, tales of a trucker's trips -- or proposed trips anyway. It's just fun to listen to, and it has enough minor chord progressions that it doesn't really get tiresome at all throughout the track.

Polar opposites don't push away

It's the same on the weekends as the rest of the days

And I know I should go but I'll probably stay

And that's all you can do about some things

"Polar Opposites," the next track on the album, is obviously a lot shorter, but it gets the point across too. The guitar is reminiscent of a more upbeat "Trailer Trash" but the chorus will stick in your head for at least a little while longer than the song itself might.

Well all the apostles, they're sitting in swings

Saying "I'd sell off my savior for a set of new rings

And some sandals with the style of straps that cling best to the era"

It is within the last two tracks that The Lonesome Crowded West leaves its most lasting impression. Two acoustic tracks to close out a very loud disc, by anyone's standards, show the band to be as versatile as they are creative. Ideas of religious thoughts are slightly explored in the beginning of track fourteen, "Bankrupt On Selling", but not quite followed through with until the final track.

Well all's not well

But I'm told that it'll all be quite nice

You'll be drowned in boots like Mafia

But your feet will still float like Christ's

And I'll be damned

They were right

In the last song of the album, "Styrofoam Boats/ It's All Nice On Ice, Alright" Brock calmly decides what would happen if he, an apparent atheist, died and indeed did go to a heaven where a God existed. It's not all too depressing because Brock does it all tongue-in-cheek.

And as the album closes, we're left with that lasting impression of Modest Mouse. The lasting impression of a band that can discuss serious issues of isolation incredibly well, but can do it with such great wit that, in the end, the idea that everything will be "all nice on ice" seems quite feasible. That fact, to me, means Modest Mouse has done their job in telling the story of this album from front to back. Though it stutters for a few tracks, it is well worth the price of admission. If you can find The Lonesome Crowdest West, purchase it immediately, and then pick up any other Modest Mouse music you can, because you just might enjoy yourself.

Rating: 8.0

- Dan Kricke

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