The world of mainstream music is constantly transforming as new artists, styles and trends are embraced with each passing year. In spite of these changes, some musicians have maintained their popularity across decades, reinventing their sounds and careers. Each week, A&E columnist Emily McCormick will discuss the evolution of ’90s artists who have carried the spirit of their decade into today’s music scene.
Rock music and classic literature may not be two subjects commonly seen side-by-side. But how I see it, Modest Mouse is a band made up of novelists.
In 1993, the Seattle-based band took its name from an obscure line in Virginia Woolf’s story “The Mark on the Wall,” referring to “the minds of modest, mouse-colored people who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”
It makes sense that the members of Modest Mouse themselves are such talented writers, since they’re obviously a well-read bunch. If you look carefully, Modest Mouse often pays homage to famous literary works. The band’s flair for referencing great literature and crafting its own powerful narratives has kept Modest Mouse afloat in today’s music world.
Besides the Virginia Woolf reference in their title, Modest Mouse has also tipped a hat to Beat poetry in the song “Bukowski,” and its music video for the song “Dashboard” makes sea-faring references to science fiction author H.P. Lovecraft. The band said in its commentary for its latest album that the whimsical, carnivalesque single “Sugar Boats” was inspired by “Wicked River” by Lee Sandlin, a new book about the Mississippi River.
The members of the band have proven themselves to be as talented of storytellers as the classic author who penned the band’s namesake. Each of their albums and songs tells a complete narrative with fully fleshed-out plots and thought-provoking metaphors and morals. As I listen to Modest Mouse, I feel the same transportive experience I get from reading a sci-fi or fantasy novel.
Take, for example, the band’s latest hit, “Lampshades on Fire,” from its latest album “Strangers to Ourselves.” Through wailing vocals and power guitar chords, the song tells of a time in the not-so-distant future when humankind will have to “Spend some time to float in outer space / Find another planet make the same mistake” after exhausting our earth’s resources.
Space and science fiction have been a connective tissue for the band since 2000’s “The Moon & Antarctica”, an album featuring songs with enough dystopian premonitions to rival a Stanley Kubrick script or George Orwell tale.
But Modest Mouse’s stories have not just been apocalyptic or otherworldly. In many cases, the band’s lyrics are literary realism at its best. For me, the most touching Modest Mouse songs and stories have been those born out of the members’ own trials and tribulations.
I almost cried the first time I heard the song “Ansel,” also from this year’s album. In it, lead singer and frontman Isaac Brock laments his brother Ansel’s death in a 2004 avalanche when climbing Mount Rainier. He weaves a poignant reminder through the music that we can never really know how long we have here in this life, or when our loved ones will eventually be taken from us.
In other instances of autobiography, “Trailer Trash” from the 1997 “The Lonesome Crowded West” album recounts Brock’s impoverished childhood growing up in a trailer with his family in Oregon. The kindling for the 2004 single “The Good Times are Killing Me” had been Brock’s own struggles with addiction.
By now, the band seems to have the writing process down to a science. They revealed their methodology to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year.
“Find a way to make what you’re saying matter to people without saying too much at all,” Brock said. “Allow everyone enough imagination and ownership of coming to something themselves.”
Modest Mouse has reaped the benefits for its intellectual, poetic melodies. Prior to this year’s “Strangers” album, “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank” hit No. 1 in 2007 on the Billboard Top 200. Fans have been tooting for years that Modest Mouse has some of the best writing in the industry.
Whenever I listen to Modest Mouse, I’m tuning in for the prose and for the poetry as much as I am for the indie rock sonority. Its oeuvre has shown time and time again that the lyrics and meaning behind it are just as vital to a song’s success as virtuosic riffs or tuneful refrains.
For Modest Mouse, the pen truly is as mighty as the guitar.
– Emily McCormick