Album: The Moon and Antarctica
Artist: Modest Mouse

by Nicholas Sabin

Modest Mouse is, quite possibly, the greatest band you've never heard of. After spending the nascent years of their career putting out tunes on Calvin Johnson's K Records (along with a handful of singles for Sub Pop), they made the leap to the major label scene in 2000, releasing The Moon and Antarctica on Epic.

Isaac Brock, the group's principal songwriter and vocalist, is one of those rare musicians who would actually be able to make a living as a writer if he weren't in a band. His lyrics are capable of being alternately hopeful, pessimistic, determined, and philosophical - and often in the same song. "3rd Planet," Antarctica's opening track, begins with "everything that keeps me together is falling apart / I've got this thing that I consider my only art / of fucking people over." The song then launches into a four-minute meditation on God ("an eye in the sky that can't be stopped"), heaven ("when you get to the promised land, you're gonna shake that eye's hand"), and geography ("the universe is shaped exactly like the earth / if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were").

Between visits to Hell ("the devil's apprentice, he gave me some credit / he fed me a line and I'll probably regret it" on "Alone Down There") and outer space ("the stars are projectors, yeah / projecting our lives down to this planet Earth"), there are musings on broken relationships ("A Different City" features the line "I will remember to remember to forget you forgot me"), macabre folk tales (the entirety of "Wild Packs of Family Dogs," cutely accompanied by an accordion), and funky, bass-driven tales (thanks to Eric Judy's dexterous rhythms) of evangelistic electioneering ("Tiny Cities Made of Ashes").

Aesthetically, The Moon and Antarctica is a wildly varying masterpiece; on the Mouse's two earlier recordings (This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About, their debut, and Lonesome, Crowded West), they showed hints of a unique psychedelia, putting the budget strains of recording with an indie label to their limits. Although Isaac Brock openly laments signing with Sony now, there is a marked difference in the way this record sounds when compared to Modest Mouse's previous releases on Up Records. The guitar tracks receive the kind of distortion that Tom Morello (of Audioslave and, formerly, Rage Against the Machine fame) tries to keep away from,. The drumming - applied seamlessly by former Mouse Jeremiah Green - is soft when it needs to be, loud and tight when called for, and never needlessly dominates a song. The Moon and Antarctica sounds good, both in the production and the structure of it.

What is most important about The Moon and Antarctica, however, is one simple thing: there is not a single un-listenable track on the entire record, from start to finish. It is one of the truly classic records, the kind I would be proud to pay for (and did). You can play it while driving, napping, writing, dancing, or making love (the combination of any of these activities is discouraged. Combining any of these activities with making love is strongly discouraged).