For the uninitiated, Modest Mouse hail from the Seattle area and sound like a jammier Pixies if Black Francis had Attention Deficit Disorder. This Mouse can't be but so modest, releasing two double albums (including The Lonesome Crowded West), two EPs and three singles in just over a year. Such quantity implies a confidence not quite realized until this album. Here we find a little of everything -- a turntable adding scratches to the conventional rock sound of "Heart Cooks Brain", a down-by-the-river fiddle on "Jesus Christ was an Only Child", a few pop nuggets and several longer pieces with a half-dozen tempo changes.

Thematic glue binds the musical sprawl, with stream- of- conciousness lyrics touching on the familiar Mouse topics of suburban decay, the lonely road, confusion and dislocation. Frontman Isaac Brock's lyrics are like a glass table at an SNL cast party, with finely-chopped lines pointing in all directions: "My brain's a cliff/ and my heart's the bitter buffalo" ("Heart Cooks Brain"); "I'm drowning upside down/ my feet afloat like Christ's" ("Styrofoam Boots"). When a band's oldest member is twenty-three, the active word is usually "potential." Modest Mouse, however, have arrived.

-Mark Richardson

Sound Clip:
"Trailer Trash"
MPEG-LayerIII
64kpbs.44kHz.
341k.43sec.