Modest Mouse is taking a victory lap 25 years after the fact, celebrating 1997’s “The Lonesome Crowded West” — widely considered to be one of the most important indie-rock records of all time — on its current tour.
The band born in Issaquah, Washington, but which now calls Portland, Oregon, home, performed the album in its entirety during a terrific sold-out show at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Wednesday (Nov. 30). The troupe, led, as always, by brilliant singer-songwriter-guitarist Isaac Brock, kicked off the concert with a ferocious take on the album opener “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” and continued, in order, through all 15 cuts.
It would take the four-piece group — also featuring drummer Jeremiah Green, bassist Russell Higbee and guitarist Simon O’Connor — just over 80 minutes to complete the task, along the way delivering probably a dozen tunes that stand among the best in the band’s entire catalog.
Modest Mouse used the opportunity to remind people — many of whom did not need reminding — 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 (still) 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 record clashed with basically everything that was popular at the time, sounding nothing like what the band’s grungy neighbors in Seattle had been doing, but owing more than a bit to the DIY/underground punk scene in nearby Olympia. Its avant-garde nature, which felt way more inviting than off-putting, struck a blow for artistic freedom, calling on a new generation of performers to travel whatever paths they so desired.
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 Modest Mouse itself would experience in the 2000s.
“The Lonesome Crowded West” songs have also aged incredibly well, with numbers such as “Heart Cooks Brain” and “Convenient Parking” coming across like they could’ve been written just last week as Brock and company delivered mostly faithful versions in concert.
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 a Pitchfork documentary film about the album.
Brock was hitching a ride in Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” as he railed against paving paradise to put up a parking lot. But the way he did this was unlike anything we’d heard before, as he mixed ludicrous yet impactful dance songs like the mighty “Doin’ the Cockroach” with softer, earnest and biting moments such as “Bankrupt on Selling.”
Brock’s lyrical approach, which slyly mixes oddity with poignancy, is as idiosyncratic as any in indie-rock. The closest comparison might actually be found outside the genre. The way Brock cleverly mixes heartbreak and humor feels reminiscent of folk-music great John Prine. Certainly, a Modest Mouse lyric like “Opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away” (from “Out of Gas”) sounds like something that could’ve come from Prine’s pen.
The crowd was a mix of “The Lonesome Crowded West” devotees, who sang along to pretty much every lyric with reverence, and chatty partygoers who seemed to have missed the memo that the band was focusing on its 1997 masterwork instead of performing later-era pop hits like “Float On,” “Dashboard” and “Lampshades on Fire.”
When Brock forgot one of the early lines to “Bankrupt on Selling,” die-hard fans just lifted their voices to cover for the lead singer. It was a touching moment, one that underscored once again just how much “The Lonesome Crowded West” means to these listeners.
Modest Mouse setlist:
(“The Lonesome Crowded West” begins)
1. “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine”
2. “Heart Cooks Brain”
3. “Convenient Parking”
4. “Lounge (Closing Time)”
5. “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child”
6. “Doin’ the Cockroach”
7. “Cowboy Dan”
8. “Trailer Trash”
9. “Out of Gas”
10. “Long Distance Drunk”
11. “(Expletive) Luck”
12. “Trucker’s Atlas”
13. “Polar Opposites”
14. “Bankrupt on Selling”
15. “Styrofoam Boots/It’s All Nice on Ice, Alright”
(“The Lonesome Crowded West” ends)
Encore:
16. “A Life of Arctic Sounds”
17. “Too Many Fiestas for Rueben”
18. “Edit the Sad Parts”
19. “Five Stop Mother Superior Rain”
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