In years past, I ranked all 91 songs by Modest Mouse. It was a lengthy endeavor. Then the band had the audacity to put out yet another album and there are now 103 songs in their catalogue (counting only officially released studio albums, of course).
A few of my fellow Modest Mouse fans have asked me my thoughts on the new album, The Golden Casket. I know sifting through 103 songs to find my thoughts on just one album would be annoying at best, too mentally strenuous to ever bother to do at worst. So I figured I'd create a separate post--an abridged version of the rankings containing only my thoughts and rankings from the new album. I also left the songs before and after each new song so you could see, roughly, the context in which it was ranked.
Yes, I understand how niche this all is. Enjoy!
88. "Convenient Parking" (The Lonesome Crowded West, 1997)
87. “Walking & Running” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
Although
it feels silly to define this song by what it isn’t, I'm having a hard time finding positive things to to say about what it is. So I'll just say
this: in short, "Walking and Running" is neither
boring nor great. That being said, I try to find something good to say about every song.
Although it doesn't really stand out on the album, the verses of this song feel like a sped up, creepy verse we'd get from Good News
(this is my attempt at a compliment) but with weaker lyrics and without
contributing to an overall excellent album theme. As for the point of
the song, it isn't weak, per se: "There are some thoughts, That should
never, Form to words inside our throats." That's poignant enough. But
when your best verse is something like:
We are walking and running and we are moving around
Well, we're so very active we make hummingbirds proud
With our talkin', talkin', chatter, chatter, lips, throat, smile
We make such a noise that the Blue Angels are proud
With our poking and prying, we hauled your secrets all out
There was so much garbage, make a rummage sale proud
Here I'm walking and running and we are moving around
Well, we're so really active we make hummingbirds proud, with our
Well the best thing I can say is, at least there's some energy in this song.
86. "Alone Down There" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
...
83. "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" (The Lonesome Crowded West, 1997)
82. “Lace Your Shoes” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
To
me, this whispery song is halfway between pretty and boring, the latter
quality being somewhat of a rarity for a band like Modest Mouse. Of
course, it's also rare that they pen lyrics directed toward their family
members, and this track appears to be Isaac Brock singing to two young
daughters (both aged under 5 years or so at the time of writing, if the
internet is to be believed). The song has nice flashes, as Brock tells
his young daughters "sunshine pours out of your mouth and eyes" and that
he "can't wait to see you lace your shoes... to see what paths you
choose."
In some ways, this song is a sleeper hit on Golden Casket,
by which I mean it's both a bit of a gem and it's not altogether unlike
a lullaby. But it certainly lacks energy when compared to, say,
"Ansel," which was written about the death of Brock's brother. I
seriously would not be surprised if he used this track to put his
daughters to sleep. Outside of the chorus, it nearly puts me to sleep.
But
when approaching this song, looking to dive in, pick it apart, and put
my critical spin on it, I can’t help but think I’m really not the target
audience here. In what world does it make sense for me to criticize a
song Isaac Brock wrote for his children? If this song was written for
his daughters and the rest of us listening are just flies on the wall,
then perhaps we just ought to let it be.
81. "Be Brave" (Strangers to Ourselves, 2015)
80. "Ionizes & Atomizes" (This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, 1996)
79. “Transmitting Receiving” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
As a whole, I find Golden Casket to be, oddly, middle heavy. The highs aren't very high, but neither are the lows too low.
The foundation of "Transmitting Receiving" is a background vocal track that is just a list of things.
The things hardly feel random, though, and many of them are themes from
previous Modest Mouse songs and albums. You might recognize more than a
few past fixations of lyrics and cover art, such as horses, wagons,
aeroplanes, cars, hair, alligators, dust, toys, planets, ocean air,
stars, black holes, and spiders, among others. But those are the
highlights--The List is truly long and eclectic and hard to pin down. I
don't know what each listed thing was chosen for, and I think we'd be
amiss to analyze it too closely. I'm sure some were included based on
feel, or because they just sounded right. And this isn’t unusual; when
listening to Modest Mouse, there's often more meaning to be found in
feel and sound than there is in the literal and precise absurdities.
As, perhaps, a criticism, this song is more or less a 6-minute list of just things.
The only perspective we get on this list comes from just a small
collection of non-list lines: "Nothing in this world is gonna petrify
me, we are repeating and transmitting, we are receiving." I assume The
List is, more or less, the nothing that is being referred to here.
As
perhaps another criticism, I don't think there's really a strong point
to the song and if there is, it doesn’t feel like it ever got driven
home properly (outside of pointing out how everything, including us, is
essentially just transmitting and receiving information and that's
really not so scary after all). If we see the universe as waves and
automation and science, then what is there to be afraid of? I don’t
know.
78. "What People Are Made Of" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
77. “Leave a Light On” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
If you're looking for an argument that Golden Casket is
overproduced and strays far from the classic Modest Mouse sound, look
no further than "Leave a Light On." The guitar part is somewhere between
unimportant and indiscernible and the lyrics are, I think, fairly
unimaginative. There are 40 or so lines in the song and 24 of them are
either "we're leaving, we'll be home soon" or "I'll leave the light on
for you." The rest are odd speculations and observations about people's
houses and what they're made of. But at least the song sounds nice.
But perhaps the focus on high production is what prevents the bottom half of songs on Golden Casket
from being objectively bad. The downside is, however, that if you like
the Modest Mouse of the past, a song like "Leave a Light On" might have
you questioning your allegiance. This track strikes me as,
unfortunately, inoffensive and neither boring nor insightful. On one
hand, I can't help but wonder if I'm being too harsh. But on the other, I
wonder if Modest Mouse has lost the plot, or if they've just evolved
and moved on from angry screaming, long droning guitar outtros, and
lyrics that really make you think "fuck yeah."
76. "Dance Hall" (Good News for People Who Love Bad News, 2004)
...
73. "Strangers to Ourselves" (Strangers to Ourselves, 2015)
72. “Never Fuck a Spider on the Fly” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
In
a word, I'd say the image this track conjures is grotesque. But it's
also playful, if not even a little funny. The double entendre confirms
what we already know: Modest Mouse loves the imagery or perhaps the
motif of the desolation and meaninglessness and insignificance we assign
to flies. To me, this song has nothing to do with insects (or
arachnids, for all you science nerds) and is really a warning. It says,
more or less, and in an upbeat and nearly whimsical way, to be cautious
of the webs and traps of surviving in society. There's plenty of
depression to go around, plenty of bad to focus on, and plenty to be
bummed out about if we let ourselves. On the point of the song, I think a
few lines stand out:
You're gonna get the news
Yeah there's a lot of webs for you
...
I don't care for politics and it don't care for me
There's a lot of news and it all works as a web for you
...
We're all food
Avoid the traps
There's plenty to be caught in, be devoured by
I
think the message is apt, and it's certainly memorable. But I wouldn't
call the image a favorite of mine, even if I like the advice to be
intentional with our survival.
71. "Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)" (Strangers to Ourselves, 2015)
70. “Fuck Your Acid Trip” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
It's
bold to start your album with disorientation, though that's inarguably
what you'll experience with "Acid Trip" if you listen to it with your
headphones on. The introduction spins from right to left and back at an
increasing pace as if to say: if you think you know Modest Mouse, guess
again. I suppose what I'm saying is this: I think the album opening on a
feeling of disorientation is by design.
To me, the only song
that exists in the same dark universe as "Fuck Your Acid Trip" is
"Pistol” from the album previous to this, which was an incredibly
divisive track. Any time Modest Mouse truly changes their sound, it
turns heads, and “Acid Trip” certainly does that. To be critical, I'd
say that if every Modest Mouse song sounded like these two, I'd probably
have never gotten into them. But to give them credit, as a changeup,
"Fuck Your Acid Trip" can scratch a black itch you didn't know you had.
Though to be critical again, who the hell throws a changeup as an
opening pitch?
The lyrics, as the title suggests, take us on a
journey of frustration with the duration of an acid trip, though the
second verse clears up that it is, in fact, the writer's own acid trip
they're frustrated with. The defining feature of the song (besides being
about acid) is probably the dampened feel or mood of the
track, although the popping chorus guitar holds its own, too. Whether or
not I truly like the darkness of songs like "Pistol" and "Acid Trip," I
can at least say I'm grateful that ground never went uncharted. To me,
"Acid Trip" represents a gamble I don't particularly enjoy, but I do
respect.
69. "The Stars Are Projectors" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
...
66. "I Came as a Rat" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
65. “Japanese Trees” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
"You've
got a place to go, I've got a place to leave, let's split the gasoline"
is perhaps my favorite refrain from this album. It's relatable--I've
been on both sides of these kinds of road trips. I love the premise of
"I'm down to go somewhere with you just to get out of here."
That being said, I don't know if I completely get
this song. "You're twisted and you're bent like a Japanese tree"? On a
first listen, it’s really not until the chorus that I’m sold. It does
seem like a theme of Golden Casket to write lovely choruses with
tight, quick, perhaps disinteresting verses. But then the chorus hits
and you wonder “how could I ever have disliked this song?”
64. “We’re Lucky” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
Da-da-da-da-da-da
“We’re
Lucky” is perhaps a sequel, or at least a continuation, of “We are
Between.” What are we lucky for? For the things we are between. What are
we between? Well, stars and seas and beds and sheets, in addition to an
entire concept you may have missed by not paying proper attention
during the prequel.
If there’s one thing I’ll fault these two
songs for, it’s the repetitive lyrics. I’ll be the first to admit this
is just how I feel and isn’t necessarily grounded in fact; but when a
song is raw (i.e. 1990-2005 Modest Mouse), the repetitive lyrics feel
intentional and rough and really make you think. But for some reason
(and maybe this is just me) when a song feels heavily produced, the
repeated lyrics feel much less meaningful and poignant.
Although “We’re Lucky” is one of the better tracks on Golden Casket,
it also serves as a contrast of where Modest Mouse has been as a band.
What happened to songs about pain and ungratefulness? What happened to
clever turns of phrase? “We’re Lucky” isn’t devoid of clever lyrics, but
there’s no denying post-pandemic Modest Mouse isn’t necessarily hitting
the same. At the very least, they certainly don’t sound as passionate,
as innovative, as punchy, or as interesting. But hey, and I mean this
sincerely, at least we got a nice little trumpet part.
63. "God Is an Indian and You're an Asshole" (Strangers to Ourselves, 2015)
...
53. "Wicked Campaign" (Strangers to Ourselves, 2015)
52. “Wooden Soldiers” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
"These
fuckers wanted guilt, they tore me down and I rebuilt.” Finally. Fuck
yeah. There’s a level of harshness to it that just works.
Making
plans, making plans, making plans. Maybe not a great hook on paper, but
especially coupled with the downstepping bass part, it’s a hit. From the
vocal tracks to the odd variety of instruments and sounds weaving in
and out of view, the song still feels overproduced from a Modest Mouse
perspective. But more than perhaps any other song on Golden Casket, “Wooden Soldiers” gives us flashes of the brilliance that has been Modest Mouse in their first two decades.
That
being said, six minutes is a lot of making plans. The outro refrain of
“just being here now is enough for me” yet again sounds a lot more like
resignation than passion. I’ll readily admit I like the band better the
more angry they are. But at least with “Wooden Soldiers,” we got a
taste of it for a few lines.
51. "Cowboy Dan" (The Lonesome Crowded West, 1997)
...
49. "Lives" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
48. “Back to the Middle" (The Golden Casket, 2021)
Hidden
at the end of the album, “Back to the Middle” is a nice cap to what I’d
call a (and I use this word somewhat derogatorily) decent album. To me, the album explores the concepts of “being
between” and reaching a measure of contentment (or resignation) here or
there. It’s an album about moderation, about growth, about not flying
too close to the sun, about the danger of living in a thoughtless,
unintentional way.
That said, the lyrics here are fucking weird
if taken at face value. Once again, I think the lyrical meaning is found
more so in the feeling than either a figurative or literal
interpretation.
Back to the middle and don't you remember?
Every day was another fish tank and your
Head swims around and you wrote us a letter
Saying things will get much better, go
Back to the middle and don't you remember?
Every night, there's a tiny porch light in our
Chest pulls clouds of bugs to flutter
We felt love as it carried us, carried us.
Every
day was another fish tank? Our chest pulls clouds of bugs to flutter?
Who talks like that? To me, the lyrics border on nonsense, but the point
is still there: the extremes are unsustainable and unsafe. We should
strive to get back to the middle. If you’re trying to piece together the
point of the song, I’d point you toward these lines:
We lived in cities and we lived in caves
I guess I'd like to move back to the middle again
…
Every winter, we would wish it were warmer and
Every summer, I will knit you a sweater
…
We're up here right now, not forever
We'll be pulled right back down to the middle again
47. "Shit Luck" (The Lonesome Crowded West, 1997)
46. “We Are Between” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
Even near what I’d call the pinnacle of Golden Casket,
“We Are Between” sounds more than a little bit like Isaac Brock fooling
around. The song is pretty damn good, but there’s still no serious
depth here. Although it’s fairly digestible, I wouldn’t consider it peak
Modest Mouse. It’s the most pop-ish song on the album, though it still
feels relatively dark in sound.
That being said, the song starts with a one-two punch:
1. This is the worst part: we are mirrors of our own faults (later it’s “we are made of old rocks and salt”)
2. This is the best part: we are driven by our own thoughts (later it’s “we are made up of grass to straw”)
As with nearly every song on Golden Casket,
the lyrics leave me wanting more, expecting more. But as a man who just
turned 50 and is, by his own admission, much less sharp than he used to
be after all the drugs, I have to wonder if it’s an evolution of style
choice or if that’s just what three decades of touring and performing
does to a band.
45. "Steam Engenius" (We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, 2007)
...
30. "Perfect Disguise" (The Moon & Antarctica, 2000)
29. “The Sun Hasn’t Left” (The Golden Casket, 2021)
I’m a little self-conscious that my favorite song from Golden Casket
is the most radio friendly and gimmicky out of all 12 songs. To me, the
marimba hook that welcomes us and bridges the gaps throughout elevates
the song to be the best on the album. It also works with the weird
amount of optimism we see in the lyrics:
You're not wrong, things are a mess
But there's still something left.
…
There's more to life than
Online dating sites
Or hell, you pick the vice, I
Know that's not concise
...
I don’t know you, you don’t know me
You and I are us, you see
“You
and I are us” reads good on paper, but is a weird focal point of the
lyrics, I’ll admit. But at the end of the day, the point of the song is
this: the most regularly depressed, drug fueled, nihilistic band is
telling me to hang on to hope because not all is lost quite yet. Is it
optimism? Or is it the same resigned contentment from earlier in the
album? And as a post-covid but pre-2024 election release, do they still
believe this message? I don’t know, and I wonder.
28. "Bankrupt on Selling" (The Lonesome Crowded West, 1997)
...
1. "One Chance" (Good News for People Who Love Bad News, 2004)
Like a diamond against a black backdrop, "One Chance" stands as a
starkly optimistic beacon of philosophical wisdom when held in context
against Modest Mouse's typically dark atmosphere. Growing up listening
to this song, I never suspected it would eventually become my
favorite--it's a sneaky hit that doesn't try to stand out or steal the
album. This song is everything everyone thought "Float On" was, but done
in a much more meaningful way. It's the
not-made-for-popular-consumption version of "Float On," as far as I'm
concerned.
In reality, there are, perhaps, 15 or
20 songs or
so that are worthy of consideration for the #1 spot, I'll admit. Which I
like best might change on a given day, year, or a given listen through
the discography. But among those top 20 songs, the optimism among those
songs is what sets "One Chance" apart. In truth, the difference between
my
#1 song and my #20 song is a slim margin (contrast that with the
difference between song #100 and
#80-- they are worlds apart).
But yes, I think
it boils down to this: much as Modest Mouse is talented at writing
atheist, god hating, fist shaking, universe criticizing jams decorated
with sloppy vocals and dissonant, wave bending guitars, I think they're
equally talented at flipping the script completely: writing about softly
beautiful moments, simple observations, nice little thoughts and
moments in time. And frankly, I don't think either extreme aspect of
their songwriting would be as good without the existence of the other--
the dichotomy makes each side special. Like a compliment meaning more
when it comes from you asshole friend, knowing a band who loves to shake
their fist at the universe can still find a moment of peace is
comforting. Knowing a band who writes about how important it is to try
and get this one life right, but can still see the pointlessness of it
all gives them credibility and saves them from being corny idealists or
unsalvageable complainers alike. It's always been the depth and
cleverness at their own introspection that made Modest Mouse who they
are and the epitome of this, in a surprisingly optimistic way, is found
in "One Chance" as they write about the importance of friends and habits
and family. I can't speak for every Modest Mouse fan ever, but the
message of the importance of life in "One Chance" is one of the
strongest lessons I'll take from any of their songs. Or, at
least...that's my two cents.
Anyways, that's it! Thanks for reading.
