Modest Mouse

Modest MouseIt’s all coming together. Finally.

Last week I asked Eric, who is usually pretty hip to the music scene, if he liked the band Modest Mouse and he said he’d never heard of them. I thought it was odd because I’ve heard their music and the buzz around the band a fair amount and I’m usually a few steps behind him and a couple other friends I know who are way into indie rock. I went to Michelle’s that night and was hanging out with Doug & Jenny and watching TV and this Nissan ad comes on. And in the background a Modest Mouse song is playing. AHA! Satisfied that I’d solved the mystery, I purchased the song Gravity Rides Everything from the iTunes Music Store and compulsively listened to it over and over (only about 40 times in 1 day).

Today, I was researching the band online and noticed they’re from the Seattle area. Now I’m thinking that I probably heard them a lot when I was out in Seattle and then came back here and heard them on the Nissan commercial and that’s how it all came about.

I never listen to the radio in New York. NEVER. Ok, except if there’s a blackout. While I was in Seattle I became interested in KEXP and started listening to it online here in New York. KEXP plays all kinds of bands and songs that should be, but never are, played on the radio. Bands like The Dandy Warhols, Interpol, Fountains of Wayne, Idlewild, The Chemicals, The Pixies, The Replacements, Travis, Moby, Radiohead, Beck, Bjork, Dashboard Confessional, and.. and.. Modest Mouse. So, you see.. it’s all coming together. And it all makes sense now.

18 thoughts on “Modest Mouse

  1. The Moon & Antarctica is one of the greatest albums I have ever heard. I actually have back-up copies because my friends would take them.

  2. Yeh, like 3 years after you and David tried to force feed the Pixies to me I’ve finally come to appreciate them. Debaser & Here Comes Your Man. Yummy. I need to get more of their stuff.

  3. If you like KEXP you may want to listen to WFMU from right across the river in Jersey City. 91.1 or wfmu.org. Each dj spins their own choice of music. Some shows are easier to listen to than others. Be patient. Great photos, by the way!

  4. Modest mouse has to be one of the best bands to come along in quite awhile!it’s hard to believe that they’ve been around as long as they have.check out Ugly Cassanova Isaac Brock’s solo.

  5. so i’m a little late on this – i just saw the commercial this evening but i thought i would say something anyway. there has been a lot concern about the cheapening of art but without mention of what the art is. it is more than a song, it must be. nobody seems to care when the osmonds or a rolling stone song gets used for ads. i think that modest mouse, especially their song ‘gravity rides everything’ conveys a sense of excitement and passion that is inconsistent with the allure it comes to represent behind a fucking minivan.

    someone on the post thought that modest mouse was not in the wrong b/c their message was at least consistent. this is a good idea but i don’t think the song specifically, or the their collection of music, can be listened to as music that will help sell cars. the sense of urgency, hope(lesness), and anxiety cannot be translated through a minivan commerical.

    “No one really cared for it at all,
    Not the gravity plan…
    I wanna go back to sleep,
    In the motions and the things that you say…”

    I think it is very difficult to convey the sort of genuine emotion explained here – a CAR COMMERCIAL! does not seem to be a good forum for this emotion. In this sense, I think the art is directly betrayed by this sort of consumer appeal – Buy the car b/c the commercial plays great music? (and it is great music, to be sure) – anyone who might even consider admiring this music b/c of what nissan has done to it will equally betray the music of authenticity and the ideas its structure provides for.

    modest mouse can do what they like with the song – it’s their music – an important question is what does this commmercial mean for the music. i’m not sure i know the complete answer to this question but:

    “As fruit drops, flesh, it sags,
    Everything will, fall right into place.
    When we die, some sink and some lay,
    But at least I wont have to see you float away.”

  6. What’s with all this talk about a message? It’s just a fucking song. It’s just a fucking commercial. Don’t make it out to be more than it simply is. Find some other more important issue to expel your emotion and intelligence on. The two commercials that this MM’s song was used on does not cheapen their art…as art is always meant to meet commerce unless it created in a fucking vacuum for no one else to appreciate it. Neither commercial screamed to the uninitiated: “This is a Modeest Mouse song and that makes this commercial and our product cool/more valid/hip (or what have you) because of it.” Get over it. Isaac, Eric & Jeremy made a little extra coin for the gesture. Be happy for them. They’re still the same great band and the song is still a great song. Let’s move on.

  7. hey i think ya’ll guys are really great! When are you planning a trip to San Antonio, Texas? or any where close

  8. I was wondering if anyone knows what video game uses this song(gravity rides..) It’s a computer game and it only uses the first 10 sec or so of the song… or maybe they took it from the game…dunno. It’s an obsessive search now. If anyone can help…well, it would help.

  9. I don’t think that Modest Mouse cheapenned anything by letting Nissan use their music in a car commercial.. that’s what it’s there for. I do think it’s kind of disappointing that they’re on the radio now, because everyone knows about them. The only good thing about them being on the radio is that maybe people will listen to their music, and really like it, and then they’ll make a few more albums. I mean, they already have a lot of albums, and since they’re just getting on the radio, that could spark success, and lead to more… I don’t know, just a thought.

  10. i’m with ryan, in a massive way. fuck this ‘let’s move on’ attitude. dissolving the division between art and commerce may seem very hiply cynical, but it’s a fucking vital distinction. fucking vital.

  11. artists need to eat and pay bills. If 10 seconds of a song will do that and allow the artist to continue to create and earn a living why not? The song wasnot created to sell minivans. Having that 10 seconds used commercially does not change its original artistry. If it works for everybody that really matters in the equation, (the artists and Nissan) then perhaps the rest of us should enjoy, and let the creators attempt to earn a living. We, on the other hand ,can be entertained both by the original art and then by the pretty funny idea of the whole context of the song actually being used to sell mini vans.

  12. “KEXP plays all kinds of bands and songs that should be, but never are, played on the radio. Bands like The Dandy Warhols, Interpol, Fountains of Wayne, Idlewild, The Chemical s, The Pixies, The Replacements, Travis, Moby, Radiohead, Beck, Bjork, Dashboard Confessional”
    what the hell are you talking about, fountains of wayne suck beyond belief, so does travis and the rest of those bands are quite popular…. youre and idiot.

  13. I know the whole idea of not appreciating a band because they “sold out” is so cliche, but I rather dislike their new album, Good News for People who Like Bad News and am dismayed at all the radio play that mindless happy sort of tune, Float On is getting. This isn’t the original Modest Mouse. The original Modest Mouse had this dark, untouchable sort of bizarrity that was so pure and refreshing. I still happen to like their first album, This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to think About, the best, although I admit that the Moon and Antarctica is their finest work.
    Now, they’ve become so accessible and glossed over with the acidic saliva of cooperate America.

    I miss the obscure Modest Mouse.

  14. they did sell out isaac will even admit that gnfpwlbn is total bullshit give me some speed some whiskey and lonesome crowded west

    fuck the new gayness

  15. I think I went to every show of theirs in Seattle between 1997 and 2004. I saw them in tiny venues at the UW and the now defunct RCKCNDY or “Rock Candy” (also known as the sweatbox, because its black walls sweat condensation with all those bodies in there). I miss the days when Isaac would do the incredible, EPIC songs, sometimes singing into his guitar he was so damned drunk.

    Sometimes he’d bust out a new song for the crowd, who was always hungry for more MM material. The first time he did “Grey Ice Waters” it was an incredible 11 minute performance. No song was ever “too long,” it was “just the right length” for the work’s creative purposes. 11 minutes of ethereal musicality; 11 mintues of holding your breath through that MM guitar distortion; 11 minutes of Isaac trying to stand up straight and whine into a microphone.

    The encores were also incredible, as epic as the original set, and no one ever left the show before Isaac finished his last “alright alright alright…,” which, while he was improvising, could go on for eternities.

    I was such a little starfucker in my buffalo t-shirt, but they remain my favorite band of all time. Not only is MM prolific, but it seems that they don’t really write a bad song.

    I’m suffering from nostalgia for the early days. The band has really grown up from a home grown favorite to something that’s piped into every Urban Outfitters store. But they’ve earned their success, and I don’t think anyone can begrudge them for being “too commercial” or “losing their indie cred.”

  16. i think that the music is great and that issac is hot! I WANNA GO TO ONE OF THEIR CONCERTS BEFORE I DIE DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!! why dont they play in louisville or campellsville or my skool or somfin? PLEZZZZZZZZZEEEE PLAY SOME WHERES IN KY SO I CAN AT LEAST GET A PICTURE OF U ISSAC!!!!!!! oh yeah, come to think of it, nebraska is alost n 4gotn state. NICE TIE!

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