Cult favorite Modest Mouse plays a different set every night. So when Isaac Brock — the veteran alt-rock band’s mercurial frontman, lyricist and spiritual leader — approaches the microphone, you never know what to expect.
Brock knows. And he is prepared to lead the faithful, as would all good cult leaders everywhere.
So break out the Kool-Aid at the BayCare Sound. And let’s get ready to follow.
The band opened Wednesday’s show in Clearwater with deep cuts. But mostly every Modest Mouse song can be defined as such. Whether he’s playing guitar with his teeth on “Trucker’s Atlas” or plucking on a banjo on “Bukowski,” Brock’s music grabs you by the shoulders and shakes. The band breezed through a 20-song 106-minute set that spanned much of the strength of their 30-year catalog. I missed not hearing “Dramamine” and “Cowboy Dan.” But I’ll live.
“An Eraser and a Maze,” Modest Mouse’s eighth full-length album, is their best in two decades. Wednesday’s set featured five of the new songs, all crisply executed. The highlight came early with “Speak ‘N Spell (Or Not)” and its anthem-like chorus: “I guess this is as far as we go.” The cult can relate.
For 30 years, the band that got its start in Issaquah, Washington, has dished up sharp, sardonic observations about mortality, religion, relationships and a changing world — propelled by twisty, twangy, distorted guitar.
The body of work includes their 1997 masterpiece “The Lonesome Crowded West” — a critically acclaimed indie record that nobody bought, aside from charter cult members. It arrived shortly after Brock turned 22. He’s the lone remaining original band member.
Modest Mouse appears less like the Pixies-influenced band that launched in shoebox-sized Washington clubs, ready to saw down some trees. Brock, now 51 and fairly fit, wore a long-sleeve shirt rolled up to his elbows. Today, he looks more like a dad willing to help put up the Halloween inflatables.
Wait, you’re not in the cult? Modest Mouse may not be a commercial powerhouse, but you’ve heard their music. Someone at Fox Sports obviously is in the cult. The network has had the song “Float On” on heavy rotation during its sports programming intros and outros.
So has ESPN. Basically, sports producers everywhere appear to be ingrained members of the cult.
Nissan is in the cult. The automaker sells minivans on the backs of the lovely “Gravity Rides Everything.” When the band allowed its sacred music to be featured in an automaker’s global marketing campaign, however, some disenchanted fans fled the cult.
The music was always better because of the rhythm section of drummer Jeremiah Green, who died of cancer in 2022, and bassist Eric Judy, who departed in 2012. The current supporting players are solid, but they aren’t why you’re in the cult. “Third Side of the Moon,” another new song that came later in the set, is both a tribute to Green and a confession from an aloof frontman that he could have paid more attention to his friend.
Modest Mouse relocated to Portland, Oregon long ago. That entire city is in the cult. Sadly in my years there, I never experienced an Isaac Brock sighting, though I did blast the lead singer of The Decemberists center mass in a game of laser tag at a children’s birthday party. And Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein taught guitar to a friend’s daughter. “Keep Portland Weird,” the bumper stickers implore.
But here’s the good news for people who love bad news:
You don’t have to be weird to be in the cult. You just need to appreciate the irony of it all.
Modest Mouse setlist
- “Heart Cooks Brain”
- “3rd Planet”
- “Picking Dragons’ Pockets”
- “Truckers Atlas”
- “Speak ‘N Spell (Or Not)”
- “Broke”
- “Absolutely Necessary Never”
- “Wooden Soldiers”
- “Bukowski”
- “Satin in a Coffin”
- “Knocked Down by Waves”
- “Trailer Trash”
- “Third Side of the Moon”
- “Life Like Weeds”
- “Ocean Breathes Salty”
- “Gravity Rides Everything”
- “Dogbed in Heaven/Give It a Skeleton” (encore)
- “Float On” (encore)
- “Out of Gas” (encore)
- “Night on the Sun” (encore)
