Review: Modest Mouse - Strangers to Ourselves
By Brittany Oblak, News Editor
[Epic; 2015]
Rating: 2.5/5
Key Tracks: “Pups to Dust,” “Coyotes”
Good news for people who love bad news: there’s a new Modest Mouse album and it sucks.
There’s a smorgasbord of reasons why this project has been eight years in the making; frontman Isaac Brock wanting to study mushrooms in the woods, label conflicts, growing families and aliens have all been mentioned. Unfortunately, none of the above created a strong studio production. Instead we’re left with 16 songs--15 tepid tracks and something so foul, I don’t even dare to give it a formal name.
After listening to Strangers to Ourselves in its entirety, it’s not that hard to believe Brock has been as far into the woods as Meryl Streep, and he may not have really come back.
But first, let’s address the elephant in the room before it steps on the mouse completely.
“Pistol” may be the fourth track and a terrible sonic representation of this album overall, but it’s so repulsive and insulting to any die-hard MM fan that it requires immediate attention. This little diddy is supposed to be a fictional account of the infamous killing spree carried out across the United States by Andrew Cunanan, who murdered five people over three months in 1997 including fashion designer Gianni Versace before killing himself.
This is almost a fascinating concept, but the rendering of it ruined any creativity that may have actually existed. For starters, there’s a wonky beat that sounds like it was constructed by a 14-year-old who simultaneously smoked weed and used GarageBand for the first time. Secondly, Brock comes in sounding like the Cookie Monster over lyrics saturated with creepy sexual innuendo.
The album begins with the title track, which opens ominously over steady, foreboding drums and seems to speak to Modest Mouse being blissfully ignorant that it has completely missed the past eight years as a band. “We're lucky that we slept / Didn't seem like we realized we'd be stuck in traffic,” Brock sputters out with apparent trepidation. It’s not bad, but this, along with many other songs, is average at best and could easily be a disregarded B-side.
“Shit in Your Cut,” which describes the relationship I felt with the song at this point in the record, seems to hold the notion that Modest Mouse fans will simply be satisfied as long as Brock sings in an idiosyncratic manner, with his baritone voice layered over a much deeper voice.
“Pups to Dust” should be the savior of this shitshow, but that is a responsibility it didn’t ask for and a task too daunting for one piece to carry on it’s small shoulders. It does have redeeming qualities, however, in the form of bits of Brock’s unhindered and blatant honesty. Lines such as “Love does not cost money but it ain’t free” and “The way we feel about what we do is by who has watched us” are the ones that recall why this band mattered so much in the first place. Even the signature spaced-out, quirky guitars leveled by patient drums are present and accounted for.
It seems Modest Mouse tried to move in a new direction but got caught in “The World at Large” undertow. The band’s efforts toward a different or experimental sound are so bad they seem ironic, and the trademark characteristics of the group come off essentially as being filler. Given the range of bizarre interviews, including one where Brock admits to abandoning recording because the band got caught up in the construction of its studio, it sort of seems like this effort was truly pushed (although it took eight years so there wasn’t much pushing) just to shut the world up. Brock even lays claim that he’s one of the few musicians who knows that fans putting their time into listening is just as valuable as his own time recording. After this much time, though, he must know that any who truly have worshiped at this outfit’s alter will be none too pleased.
