Issaquah, WA · indie rock · alternative rock

Modest Mouse

4 festivals played ↓

Isaac Brock's jittery, seasick guitar songs about the highway and the void — three decades of them, still unmistakable from the first yelp.

Isaac Brock formed the band after meeting bassist Eric Judy while both worked at a video store near Seattle, and drummer Jeremiah Green, found at a heavy metal show, soon joined them in Issaquah. The band's name borrows a phrase from Virginia Woolf's short story The Mark on the Wall, about people who dislike hearing their own praise. Early recordings were made at Dub Narcotic Studios for K Records, followed by a single released through Sub Pop.

Their records paired long, spidery guitar lines and off-kilter rhythms with Brock's yelping, conversational vocals, and lyrics preoccupied with highways, small towns, geology and mortality. The Lonesome Crowded West, released in 1997, built the band a devoted following, and The Moon and Antarctica, from 2000, extended that reputation before the group moved to a major label.

That move produced Good News for People Who Love Bad News in 2004, whose singles Float On and Ocean Breathes Salty gave Modest Mouse a genuine mainstream hit and a much wider audience. The follow-up, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, released in 2007, added further success with the single Dashboard.

Brock has remained the constant through numerous line-up changes. The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr was a member for a period in the mid-2000s, and other past members have included guitarists Dann Gallucci and Jim Fairchild, drummer Joe Plummer and multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso. Bassist Eric Judy left in 2012, and Green died in 2022.

The band's sound has broadened over time, taking in newer albums such as Strangers to Ourselves in 2015 and The Golden Casket in 2021, while the nervous energy and unmistakable vocal delivery have stayed. Modest Mouse now operates out of Portland, Oregon, having started three decades earlier in Issaquah, Washington.

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indie rockalternative rock