Isaac Brock’s voice contains multitudes. Modest Mouse’s longtime frontperson — and only constant member over the band’s 26-year history — emits an anxious yelp that is at once world-weary and childlike, evoking a cross between Kurt Cobain and Daniel Johnston.
That voice first broke into wider consciousness via 1997’s The Lonesome Crowded West, an album full of jagged guitar, unpredictable song structures and Brock’s oddly affecting tales about cockroaches, Orange Julius and Styrofoam boots. Think Talking Heads filtered through the depressed, rain-soaked environs of the Pacific Northwest (Modest Mouse hails from the suburbs of Seattle and now calls Portland, Ore. home).
Modest Mouse’s yearning to transcend Brock’s dour nature permeates each of the band’s album and EP releases since, which is not to say they haven’t evolved over the years. Early songs about down-and-out drifters and religious seekers gave way to more universal but no less emotionally urgent themes.
The band’s biggest hit, “Float On,” from 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News, is an uncharacteristically optimistic jaunt about a guy given a break by the police who won’t even let getting fired from his job get him down. Given its bright guitars, driving rhythms and undeniable melodic hook, mainstream popularity shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but a surprise it was.
Never comfortable in the spotlight, Brock responded by bringing in former Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr for a period and otherwise keeping a low profile (interviews and appearances outside of Modest Mouse tours are fairly non-existent). Intra-band issues among the musicians have threatened to derail the group occasionally, but Brock has persisted — 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank and 2009’s No One’s First, and You’re Next were solid entries in what stands as one of the most consistent catalogs of the era.
After a long layoff during which the band still toured fairly regularly, 2015’s Strangers to Ourselves surfaced, confirming that Brock’s anxiety remains as strong as ever, most curiously exemplified by “Sugar Boats,” a seasick, piano-laced ditty that opens with this existential declaration: “This rock of ours is just some big mistake/And we will never know just where we go/Or where we have come from.”
