20 years ago today Modest Mouse released their third album Moon & Antarctic, a sprawling epic folk punk masterpiece. Issac Brocks words moved away from the urban spawl of a west being paved over, dead strip malls, and endless roads and went universal, contemplating the cosmos and our confusing place within them. He looks into his colour TV to get a view of what is outside the window, and handed gets receipts that said he didn’t buy anything, while packs of wild dogs roam the street. He ponders life and and the meaning of it all and wonders life there is a giant hand controlling it all.
The sound of the guitars is stranger then their past records. There are ghost like whispers, wild shrieks, and spacey atmospherics, ingeniously recorded and mixed into an incredible record that doesn’t quite sound like anything else. I have spent so much time with this album and never get tired of it. No matter what mood I am in it is the right mood for Moon & Antarctica.
Stereogum has done a fantastic write up which goes into much more detail and provides much more insight then I am capable of. CLICK HERE to read that.
This is the first song I ever heard by Modest Mouse and I was instantly hooked as soon as I heard the drawn out guitar and percussion that is recorded and played backwards, matched with the adjacent pop hooks and Brock’s bizarre lyrics.
Lives is my favorite song from the album with its many changes and similarities to A Day in the Life.
Everyone’s afraid of their own life
If you could be anything you want
I bet you’d be disappointed, am I right?
No one really knows the ones they love
If you knew everything they thought I bet that you’d wish that they’d just shut up
Well, you were the dull sound of sharp math when you were alive
No ones gonna play the harp when you die
And if I had a nickel for every damn dime
I’d have half the time, do you mind?
Everyone’s afraid of their own lives
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