When you wait six years to make an album, it’s almost guaranteed to go one of two ways: It’s either going to be incredible or unlistenable.
Thankfully for all concerned, Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse’s long-overdue seventh album The Golden Casket manages to pull off the former, thanks to a freewheeling, fat-free slate of oddball indie-rock, punk, pop, electronica and more — all loaded with Brock’s eccentric songcraft, idiosyncratic vocals and colourfully skewed lyrics (Exhibit A: “Fuck your acid trip, I need to get home”). Fingers crossed that they don’t make us wait another six years for the next one. But it’s reassuring to think that even if they do, it’ll be well worth the wait.
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Golden Casket is Modest Mouse’s seventh studio disc, their first release in six years — and an album that heralds another new chapter in the Isaac Brock-led band’s unpredictable evolution.
Produced with Dave Sardy and Jacknife Lee in Los Angeles and in Modest Mouse’s studio in Portland, the album hovers in the liminal space between raw punk power and experimental studio science, frontman Brock explores themes ranging from the degradation of our psychic landscapes and invisible technology, to fatherhood. The 12 tracks behave like amorphous organisms, undergoing dramatic mutations and mood swings that speak to the chronic tug-of-war between hope and despair that plays out in Brock’s head.”
