Modest Mouse celebrated the 25th anniversary of “The Lonesome Crowded West” as it brought its concert tour to the Fox Theater in Oakland.
Modest Mouse used the opportunity to remind people — many of whom did not need reminding — of the reasons why its sophomore album is considered such a landmark work. Even a quarter of a century after its release, the music still brims with big ideas and even bigger ambition, tackling hot topics and concepts with a jagged rhythms, breakneck tempo changes and a screamingly original lyrical mix of sarcasm, blunt honesty and oxymoronic twists.
The album helped lay the groundwork for the indie-rock explosion, setting the stage for the commercial and critical success that groups like Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys and, indeed, Modest Mouse itself would experience in the 2000s. A big part of that has to do with how relevant the album’s main theme — a youthful cry against the urbanization of the West — remains in 2022. Having spent the first part of his life in Montana and Oregon, before moving to Washington State at the age of 11, Brock was writing passionately from having a “front row seat to watching forests disappear and the urban sprawl begin,” the singer recalls in the Pitchfork documentary film about the album.
Brock’s lyrical approach, which slyly mixes oddity with poignancy, is as distinctively idiosyncratic as any in indie-rock. The closest comparison might actually be found outside the genre, with the way that Brock mixes heartbreak and humor in such clever ways feels reminiscent of folk-music great John Prine. Certainly, a Modest Mouse lyric like “Opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away” sounds like something that could’ve come from Prine’s pen.
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