There were two significant revolutions in my life as a music listener. Back in 1989 while in high school with a life spent listening to mainstream records, I purchased The Cure's Disintegration, the first truly "alternative" album I ever bought. I never bought another non-alternative album in my life since then. So that was pretty dramatic. About a year later in college, I listened to my roommate's copy of The Smiths' Meat is Murder and that became my favorite album of all-time, with The Smiths (who had been broken up for three years by then) as my favorite band. Those two titles still exist to this day.
My second milestone happened in 2001, when I bought Neutral Milk Hotel's three-year-old In the Aeroplane over the Sea. I'd kind of lost interest in music in recent years, as the "alternative" that was being played on the radio - those that still played any alternative music - was more of the rap-rock, latter-day grunge crap like Limp Bizkit or Creed, pretty far from The Smiths or The Cure or Pixies or Pavement or Superchunk or any of the bands I spent the '90s loving. I thought that maybe rock music was dying, not realizing that a thriving underground existence of independent artists were recording songs not playing on the radio or MTV that was as good as the great alternative acts of my youth. In the Aeroplane over the Sea - recommended by a then obscure website called Pitchforkmedia - became my 2nd favorite album of all-time, and I thought maybe this thing they called "indie rock" might be worth finding out more about. I actually owned an album they were praising as one of the best of 2000 - a band I never heard of called Modest Mouse and an album titled The Moon in Antarctica. I'm not sure how I had the album. I'm really not, but I know I must not have listened to it until the summer of 2001 - after Neutral Milk Hotel - and after that, I bought every Modest Mouse album and EP ever released, they were my artist of the year, and they were for some time my favorite band of the "indie rock" era, currently behind only The Smiths, Pavement, and Superchunk, along with fellow-indie rockers Bright Eyes, on my list of all-time favorites.
I haven't had a third milestone yet, but 2007 will prove to be a connection between the previous two. The Smiths' legendary guitarist Johnny Marr is now a member of Modest Mouse, and their new album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, features Marr on the tracks. The result? Well, I haven't heard it yet, but based on their sprawling interview in this month's Under the Radar Magazine, it figures to be their most "pop"-based record, refining the sounds of their previous record and moving further from the "expansive album-long meditations on small town boredom" that defined early records (and that made me fall in love). This is probably not a good thing, and based on the first leaked song - "Dashboard" - which is being played on Sirius 21 - Alternative Nation (along with all the "sell-outs"), it's not looking great. But on the flipside? Johnny Marr. I mean, yes, besides a decent collaboration with New Order's Bernard Sumner in the band Electronic, I can't really point to much that he's done since he left Morrissey's side, but still... it's Johnny fucking Marr.
The article interviews both Isaac Brock and Marr and definitely got me excited about the new album - excited enough to post... Brock says he's always tried to write pop songs, or songs that sounded good and catchy to him, and I know what he means - yes, the 9-minute centerpiece of The Moon and Antartica, "The Stars are Projectors," doesn't really have any "hooks", but it's still catchy in its own way. It's why I love it. He puts down "art-rock" bands that are making music intentionally inaccessible for a hip crowd (Pitchfork?), but also gives some interesting insight into his own songwriting...
- Brock: "I write songs that I think I'd like to hear or play. When we started, if I was going to go out of my way to write a song that would possibly be noticed or be accessible - I was in fucking Seattle, I could have written a fucking grunge record, huh? [But] I don't know how to cover songs. At one point, the closest I ever got to wanting to sound llike another band was the Pixies or Treepeople. And try as I might, I'm not talented enough to know how to replicate other people's shit. No matter what the fuck I try to do, I'm going to end up sounding like me. I'm going to sound like the awkward dude with the lisp or whatever."
For his part, Marr feels like he fit right in with the band, and fell in love with the songs so much he wanted to be a permanent member. That was easily accommodated by Brock, and the rest was history.
- Marr: "We're all a bunch of misfits, so all I know is that I felt very comfortable and that something good was happening. When you're creating music of that quality at that kind of rate, then something must be going right."
And how does Brock feel about Marr:
- Brock: "I'm a pretty big Johnny Marr fan. I love the guitar work he did on the Talking Heads' Naked Album. The first introduction I actually got to a Johnny Marr guitar part was through this band called Treepeople that I was really into when I was a kid. It was Doug Martsch from Built to Spill's first band, and they did a cover of "Big Mouth Strikes Again", which I didn't really realize was a cover. But I fucking loved that song. Then, later, I realized it was a Smiths song, and I though "Oh, Ok. That's interesting'."
Brock goes on to say he wasn't as big a fan of the Morrissey part of The Smiths - "there was a little bit more drama than sometimes worked for me" he puts it politely, but therein lies the convergence of the two musical milestones in my life - my youthful "alternative" era and my current "indie rock" era, as epitomed by the new Modest Marr combination. And how's the new album? Well, I'm sure you've all heard "Dashboard" by now, but here's a couple live tracks that make it onto the album in studio versions, along with an alternative version of "Float On" and a whole boatload of other tracks. Enjoy. Sorry, I don't have any other album leaks.
- Download Modest Mouse - "Dashboard".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "We've Got Everything (live)".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "Fire it Up (live)".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "Float On (demo)".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "So Much Beauty in Dirt".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "Lounge (Closing Time)".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "Custom Concern (live)".mp3
- Download Modest Mouse - "Bankrupt on Selling".mp3
- Download The Smiths - "Bigmouth Strikes Again".mp3
- Download The Smiths - "Bigmouth Strikes Again (live)".mp3
- Download The Smiths - "Suffer Little Children".mp3
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