Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)

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. (Pitchfork ca. 1997)

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