Modest Mouse

I hope there’s still something left for you.”Over the past quarter century, Modest Mouse frontmanIsaac Brock has served as indie rock’sresident backwoods philosopher, pondering his infinitesimalplace in the world at large andseeking balance in a universe governed by polar opposites.On Modest Mouse’s earliestrecords, he was surveying the changes in the world’sphysical landscape from the windows ofthe tour van, lamenting the displacement of naturalbeauty with big-box blights.The GoldenCasket,the band’s seventh-studio album,is exploringthe degradation of America’s psychiclandscape through the glass of the smartphone screen.Throughout the record, you’ll pick up onall sorts of references to cellular devices, hashtags,computers, texting, and online datingculture. But this is no typical Luddite’s manifestodecrying iPhone addiction, disinformationoverload, or how social media is destroying politicaldiscourse. The album is, however, veryinterested in the invisible technology that’s allowedall of that to happen: the cellular signals,radio frequencies, and WiFi waves that are likelybeaming through your body as you read this.“Everything is giving off a frequency,” Isaac observes.“Everything is vibrating whether you knowit or not. We're swimming in some crazy shit rightnow—it isn't visible, but it's real. I thinkeveryone's minds are getting a little scrambled rightnow. And I feel it every fucking day.”

That sensation finds its most vivid, visceral manifestationonThe Golden Casket’s stunningcenterpiece track, “Transmitting Receiving,” whereIsaac rifles through a never-ending list ofconsumer products, animals, and geographic phenomenalike an auctioneer being broadcastthrough a detuned radio, before a competing vocaltrack cuts through with a beaming chorusline—”nothing in this world’s going to petrify me”—thatfinds the serenity in cacophony. Many ofthese songs can likewise be seen as attempts to coaxpeace from paranoia. You can hear it inthe moment the apocalyptic blues of “Wooden Soldiers”dissolves into a blissfully existentialcoda mantra (”just being here now is enough for me”)that was inspired by the ceremonialburning of hallucogenic African tree bark, or in theoff-kilter yet heart-swelling lullaby “Lace YourShoes,” a.k.a. Isaac’s inaugural entry into the dad-corecanon. “When we started putting thisrecord together, I didn't know how to really singabout anything except my kids,” he admits. “Andso I was like, 'I should just write a fucking songabout the thing that is most important to me.’ It’sa weird thing to do, because cheap sentimentalityisn't really something I'm overly comfortablewith, you know?” However, in his hands, “Lace YourShoes” is no mere lovey-dovey ode to hislittle ones, but a protective embrace from the cruelworld they’ll inevitably inherit.

Even at its most urgent and aggressive,The GoldenCasketis always looking for the light, asIsaac couches the spiteful sentiments for the playful“Never Fuck a Spider on the Fly” whilesteering the seething post-punk propulsion of “JapaneseTree” into a blissfully escapist chorus.“That song was written over the course of a long time,”Isaac says, “so whoever I'm lashing outat in that song has been multiple different organizations,people, and situations. That’s the waya lot of the songs are: one way, it’s like this; andthen you change the perspective, it’s still thesame song, but with a different winner.” (Sometimes,however, a song about your friend freaking

 

out on acid is really just a song about your friend freaking out on acid, as the antsy albumopener “Fuck Your Acid Trip” attests.)

Whether Isaac is singing about electromagnetic waves,taking his kids for a walk, or trippingballs in the forest,The Golden Casketis ultimatelya plea for harmony—between nature andtechnology, between progress and self-preservation,between hope and healthy skepticism—ina world that has seemingly lost all sense of it. Butas much as it laments our modern way ofliving, it keeps the tinfoil stowed away in the kitchencabinet to highlight the silver linings of oursituation. On the album’s conjoined anthems—the drivingsingle “We Are Between” and itsdivine sequel ”We’re Lucky”—Isaac reaffirms his humblestanding on this here 3rd planet,floating somewhere between the seas and the stars,always trying to outrun his anxieties, buteternally grateful for the gift of existence itself.“We're very lucky to get to be here, on any trip,”he says. “Whatever this is and whatever we all are,it's kind of beautiful that we get to do it.”