“Strangers to Ourselves” ~ Modest Mouse

“Be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave”

~Modes Mouse. An actual lyric on this album.

I don’t really like to pick favorites, it’s hard, but being able to be able to chose a few favorite things helps communicate yourself. You might just be communicating a characiture of yourself, but it’s some communication, some human connection, which is better than just freezing in isolation like we do most of the time.

My favorite video games of the last generation are Red Dead Redemption, Dark Souls, and Mass Effect 2.

My favorite dog is my dog.

My favorite TV shows are Sopranos, MASH, Trailer Park Boys, and the Simpsons.

My favorite movies are The Big The Bad and The Ugly, The Big Lebowski, and Alien.

My favorite band is Modest Mouse.

I spent more time listening to Modest Mouse than any other band or artist, to my knowledge, just raw pure hours. My infatuation with them burned like a super nova from ages 18 through 20, and those two years are worth five or six of most other years of your life, and it was just about the only thing I listened to.

Lonesome Crowded West still stands as my favorite album. All killer, no filler, the most raw and kinetic rock album I can think of. I was really excited to hear Modest Mouse was making a new album. I pre-ordered Strangers to Ourselves as soon as I could, which was months ago, as soon as it was announced. Tonight, the eve of its release, Amazon let me stream it for free since I already bought it. I was stoked.

 

This is an aerial photo of a trailer park.
This is an aerial photo of a trailer park.

Well, it’s a fifteen track album, and out of the first ten there’s one good song and it’s the one we’ve all learned back in December. The rest of the album, short of maybe Coyotes, is so flagrantly different from Lampshades on Fire it’s a bait and switch.

 

The songs on this album weren’t made by a band playing their instruments. The prominent noises and rhythms here are the product of drum machines, bass machines, synths, and vocals buried and processed through more effect layers than a Hollywood blockbuster. This is in stark contrast to Lonesome, an amazing album that sounds like three very spun up dudes cranked it out in a tool shed on the cheapest instruments they could grab at the pawn shop. Any time a real instrument makes it to a track on Strangers, like a guitar or an occasional real drum piece, it’s buried in the mic and shoved off to the side.

The album is a sludge of dance music and ambient noise that would have sounded played out in the 80s, and this depresses me. The few words you can make out through the mix don’t typically sound heartfelt, relatable, clever, or brilliant. Something about going to France with his parents or something, I don’t know.

I’m really kind of sad about these thoughts I’m having. I could be wrong. It took me years to like We Were Dead, but this is just something else entirely. I’m all for being surprised, but there’s a difference between the surprise of an unexpected birthday party and the surprise of being jumped outside of a bar.

The music is all so synthetic. It sort of sounds like someone wanted to combine modern edm with Tom Waits. Interestingly enough it doesn’t sound like Modest Mouse.

Maybe I’ll like it in a couple months or years. I’m not sure who I’ll be when I like it. I hope the new Star Wars doesn’t suck. I hope Modest Mouse’s next album is more instrument-grounded rock and less synthetically-cooked dance bop step.

I’m still really glad this album came out.

Originally, I was going to publish this after listening to the first ten tracks- such was my depression, but that wouldn’t be right. Come on, pour a drink, we owe them at least this. Every Modest Mouse album so far has had an amazing closer, after all, I think they’ll pick it up for the home stretch.

This God is an Indian track is alright, god some country pickin and banjo plucking, one has one line of lyrics but that’s okay, maybe. Oh man you guys remember Cowboy Dan? That was dope.

Whoa this The Tortoise track actually got a guitar in it. Nice. Whaling guitar sounds, like A Whale Song you remember that one. Pretty good track off a pretty good EP. Actually that EP was nasty, I’d take it out for sushi. Hey hold up this track is actually solid. Nice. Got a little get up and go to it.

Not really sure what they’re saying. I remember years ago reading words that Modest Mouse said they were done with using space as a thematic starting point for lyrics, it’s too bad, The Moon was definitely the tightest conceptual piece. It’s relatable. Someone being so struck with grief and regret that they attempt to rationalize their sorrow in the grand scheme of the universe, and in any scheme that big they don’t mean a thing so there’s no reason anything matters. That was a tight concept. Do you remember Lonesome? A raging manifesto on the modern human condition, the passions and furies of materialism, sprawl, religion, love, hate, long expanses, alcoholism. The closing piece to Lonesome conceded a fear of being wrong about atheism at the potential cost of eternal damnation, and the waning words of the album conceded with giving up and submitting to everything, finding solace in hard drugs. Drums building to an anxious crescendo.

“It’s alright, on ice, alright”

~Modest Mouse, closer to Lonesome Crowded West

There’s nothing really like that here. The closing lap of Strangers m picks up and actually sounds really good, but there’s no thematic catharsis.

I don’t know.

My living room speaker system
My living room speaker system

You know I love Lonesome Crowded West, and that was the product of broke, angry, foolish teenagers in a broken conversion van. They aren’t those people anymore, and I ain’t that person I was the first time I heard it anymore. We can’t be writing like we’re 17 for our whole lives, we gotta move on, and evolve our creations with ourselves, and it took me a very long to understand that but I think I understand it now. It’s why it took be so long to like We Were Dead, it wasn’t more Lonesome but there’s no way it could genuinely be more Lonesome. It would be like a creepy thirty five year old showing up to a high school garage party.

That’s okay, we all grow and evolve and I didn’t get that until I did too. When you’re 18 or 19 you’re so absolutely right about everything that you cannot fathom any possible ways your philosophy or passions will ever change. It’s why the young are the only ones foolish and egotistical enough to accuse bands of selling out.

The closing tracks on this album are strong enough to remind me why I love this band. Not amazing enough to reignite any passion. Strangers kind of just ended without any clear or moving finale. No Styrofoam Boots or Space Travel is Lonely. You could tell the album was ending though, and in its closing it did redeem itself.

I guess I like this album. I know I’m going to be listening to it in cycles for a very long time, and maybe it will grow on me like  We Were Dead did, but man I know it’s day one and my first listen but some of these tracks just seem like the whackest joint. Some of those tracks are just too fake, too synthetic, drowning in computerized instruments and digitized vocals. There could be some gold in there, though, to spelunk and find.

I still love Modest Mouse and I’ll still spin this album like a lazy susan and I’m still super hyped for their next release, which according to Swanson ain’t too far.

 

Some of the thoughts I’ve wrote at the beginning of this review have already evolved. It’s actually a pretty good album. If I listen to it enough I’m sure it’ll be a great album, or at least a good album.

 

Keep on Chooglin

 

~ Geomatic

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