Album Review: Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse
Strangers to Ourselves
Glacial Pace Recordings
modestmouse.com

Mediocrity is a fickle animal; it’s never enjoyable, but you can’t quite bring yourself to hate it. You simply have to accept that something has subverted your expectations, and try and make the most of it in any way you can.

Modest Mouse returns not-so-triumphantly over seven years after their last album with Stangers to Ourselves. Modest Mouse shook the foundation of indie-rock from the 90s’ into the early 2000s’ with their manic brand of emotive indie, creating a cult following behind albums like The Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon and Antarctica.

Strangers to Ourselves is by far the weakest offering from Modest Mouse to date. Inundated with lazy post-rock instrumentals and uninspired lyrics, this album falls flat on its face before it even stands up. The title track opens the album with little fanfare. Lead-singer and multi-instrumentalist Isaac Brock’s usual heart wrenching vocals are replaced with the generic musings of a b-side rock ballad. Other lackluster tracks include the provocatively named Shit in Your Cut, which rides along on an instrumental ripped straight from your parent’s favourite dad-rock records and filled with lyrics completely devoid of meaning.

For a band as legendary as Modest Mouse, Strangers to Ourselves comes as a huge disappointment. The indie anthems Modest Mouse created in the past stand over this modern work like parents over a misbehaving child, grimacing with displeasure and wishing the child had never been born.