Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock has spoken to NME about the Portland indie heroes’ new album ‘An Eraser and a Maze’, as well as the tragic death of founding drummer Jeremiah Green.
The album is the group’s first since 2021’s ‘The Golden Casket’ and a radical departure from that record’s psychedelic pop sound. Instead, it leans heavily into the abrasive guitar style that will be familiar to long-time fans, though there are plenty of new directions too.
‘Absolutely Necessary Never’, for example, sounds like it could have been on the synth-laden Drive soundtrack. More than 30 years since the band’s inception, said Brock, “I never walk into a project with a truly clear intention – I kind of let the record shape itself. I’ll know if I don’t like something, but I’m not going, ‘This is gonna be Modest Mouse’s prog-rock record.’ I just kinda let the chips land where they do and read the tea leaves, if you will.”
The melancholic ‘An Eraser and a Maze’ is also the first Modest Mouse album since Green died from cancer in December 2022, with the group’s ever-shifting line-up now featuring Ben Massarella (percussion), Russell Higbee (bass and guitar) and Simon O’Connor (guitar). Three producers worked on the record: Jacknife Lee, Justin Raisen and Suzy Shinn.
Brock initially postponed his latest audience with NME, citing illness. As ever with the mercurial frontman, there was more to this than met the eye…
NME: Hi Isaac! Sorry you were ill the other night – glad you’re feeling better…
Isaac Brock: “Oh, no, I had been up working on a video until one and then I decided, ‘I should take mushrooms’. And then the next day was fucking worthless, so I was just like, ‘I’m not doing this.’”
And there we were feeling sorry for you! How were the mushrooms?
“You know, bad trips are good trips too. It was partly good. I think I tried hiding in my bed for a while and then I woke up and was like, ‘You’re not going to bed…’”
When we spoke about ‘The Golden Casket’ in 2021, you said you were already working on new material. Was that a particularly inspired time for you?
“That was during the pandemic, so I went with a ‘When life gives you lemons, fuckin’ go and get something other than lemons’ approach and made the most of it. Right after we recorded ‘The Golden Casket’, I decided I didn’t wanna do my usual thing of waiting to fill my head up for a year or two just to make sure I didn’t accidentally make the same record again. So I just dove back in with Jacknife, which was great. He was recording as soon as I walked in the room and I started banging on whatever [I could find]. I was like a cat checking out a new space, giving it a little sniff.”
You certainly haven’t made the same record again. This one is a lot less poppy than ‘The Golden Casket’…
“Dave Sardy [co-producer of ‘The Golden Casket’], who I enjoy working with, is a great producer but he has a very pop lean. He had a lot of influence on the record, so I’d have something that was too heavy and he’d introduce the idea of something really poppy and I just went for it. I wonder what the record would have turned out like had I [resisted]. Say nothing but nice things, Isaac…”
This is the first new Modest Mouse album released via your own label, Glacial Pace. Why the break from Epic Records after more than two decades?
“I turned in six songs – I think four of ‘em ended up on the record – and they were like, ‘We don’t see where you’re going with this.’ They’d never chimed in before. I always just turned in whatever I had been working on and that was A-OK. They told me, as nicely as anyone can tell you, that they weren’t into it. They didn’t know what to do with it. I thought, ‘This is pointless because I’m just going to keep making this type of music.’ So I politely asked if I could weasel out of my contract, which I’d been in for far too long anyway.”
I was so sorry and shocked to read about Jeremiah’s death…
“Even the doctors treating him really thought he was going to make it through. It was incredibly shocking. It really did look like he was going to make it out. It was New Year’s Eve that his mom called me. I won’t be forgetting that any time soon.”
You’ve said, ‘I don’t grieve much… But then, you know, I’ll sing stuff. And then I’m like, Oh, there it is.’ Were there any moments where you listened back to this record and realised you were talking about Jeremiah?
“Yeah, there’s a couple points. One’s pretty obvious: it’s ‘Third Side of the Moon’. Him and a couple other people got in there. It’s going over loss in different ways, I guess, because not every portion of that song is about someone dying.
“The next batch of songs is kind of a companion piece to this record, which I have tentatively called ‘Shadows in the Shade’. There’s a cover of ‘Soul’ by Songs: Ohia [AKA Jason Molina] that I think I started nine years ago. I have just been fucking with it for so long to get it right. Jeremiah plays on that. Another friend who passed away from cancer, Rob Laakso, who used to be in Kurt Vile And The Violators, also plays on it. It’s a fucking bizarre song because it’s about passing on and [Molina] passed away.
“I feel like it’s a cursed song, but also just so beautiful. So that’s gonna be weird when I put that out. That was a really hard song not to put on the record. I kind of decided: ‘Too soon.’”
There’s a rotating cast of drummers on the album, including Janet Weiss, formerly of Sleater-Kinney…
“I kinda wanted to keep that not as one person since Jeremy left. Everyone has a different feel, so on some of the songs, I had three of them play the drums and chose whichever one felt right. I am technically maybe the worst drummer you will ever fucking meet. I’m not a drummer and I’m also not good at pretending to be a drummer or being near drums. It’s the first instrument that I learned how to play. I went to the Crass school of drumming and was trying to figure out how to play ‘Do They Owe Us A Living?’. People talk you out of being a drummer pretty quick when you can’t even play that!”
You teamed up with pop and rap producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Lil Yachty) on this album’s ‘Rotten Fruit’. People might be surprised by that, but you did work with Big Boi from Outkast on some aborted tracks around 2011…
“Yeah, I gave that a try [with Big Boi]. I should have tried harder! There’s a version of ‘Lampshades on Fire’ where Big Boi raps. At the time, I was like, ‘I don’t know where we’re going with this. It feels like two different songs.’ I listened to it sometime last year and I was like, ‘You’re a fucking idiot. You should definitely have put that out!’ We’re still talking about trying to find time to get together and do it again and actually follow through this time.”
Next year it’ll be two decades since the release of ‘We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank’, which featured Johnny Marr…
“That seems like a very long time ago considering it doesn’t seem like a very long time ago. I have clearer memories of that whole record than I do of almost any of the other records!”
Would you consider doing a 20th anniversary tour of that album?
“I just accidentally did those other tours. We did the ‘Lonesome Crowded West’ ones and that felt good because Jeremy got to do half of it (although in hindsight I would probably have suggested he spent time with his son since he already knew his diagnosis). I was pretty resistant to ever playing a record tour because it seemed too predictable and I was worried I’d get bored halfway through. I’ve never held much respect for bands that just play their record.
“But it turns out I really enjoy it! You get really good at it and that, actually, is more fun than running scared the whole time because I just introduced four new songs in the soundcheck and we have to see if we can pull any of them off, which is what I do to everyone all the fucking time. It starts wearing you down.”
If you did ‘We Were Dead…’, would you need Johnny Marr onboard?
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? Johnny manages to keep himself very busy so we’d have to probably plan well in advance. And then it gets complicated because it starts getting hurtful for the guy who’s in your band as the guitarist who also has rent to pay and shit.”
You mentioned brand new material. When can we expect to hear that?
“That will be much easier to [release quickly] because I already have the record. We’re not gonna put it out for a year. I imagine that we’ll hopefully write a few songs that I like more than a few that I was gonna put on it. I’ll just keep kicking those off records until they never end up on a record. Which probably means they’re not good songs!”
What’s ‘Shadows in the Shade’ currently sounding like?
“It’s a little darker [than ‘An Eraser and a Maze’]. There’s less fun moments.”
We were excited to hear you’re working on new material with your side project Ugly Casanova. What can you tell us about it?
“Me and Tim Rutilli [who appeared on 2004’s folky ‘Sharpen Your Teeth’, Ugly Casanova’s only studio album to date] started writing about two months ago. We got together for about five days. One song sounds like me trying to do Motown – I wouldn’t think that would work, but it actually is pretty good.”
Blimey! So it’s not going to sound like the first Ugly Casanova record?
“No, I’m not good at repeating myself, man. I’m not skilled enough to do the same thing twice.”
‘An Eraser And A Maze’ is out now. Modest Mouse are currently touring North America with dates running through to October. Visit here for tickets and more information.