Modest Mouse: The Moon & Antarctica poll

I'm going with "Tiny Cities.."

whichever one was in the volkswagen commercial

1. 3rd Planet
2. Paper Thin Walls
3. What People Are Made Of

This is REALLY tough - there are a few pseudo-standouts but this is a really consistently good album and I have super-beloved parts on almost every song. But the uptempo numbers here are what first got me into this favorite band, so it's probably "Tiny Cities," "What People Are Made Of," "3rd Planet" or "Dark Center of the Universe." I think the last is the first song that made me sit up in the seat of my friend's boyfriend's car and have to know what band this was, and the details of this mysterious "indie rock." So that.

really Isaac BrocK is this cover that much better?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41toT%2BIHdpL._SS500_.jpg

Right wing, left wing, chicken wing!

I went with "The Stars Are Projectors."

i was surprised on how much i liked this album. i bought this album and Good News... as a bonus pack back in the day. i have listen to it but never really absorbed it before this week. voting for "Dark Center of the Universe."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I lost my virginity to this album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

happy 25th

Paper Thin Walls got zero votes!?

Doctor Casino otm - very consistent album ... some stronger tracks and weaker tracks, but no super-obvious peaks, imo.

wow yeah if I were to guess I'd think Paper Thin Walls would win in a landslide

surprised zero votes for "Perfect Disguise" also

wow 25 years hits hard

sure does. as you may have guessed my music tastes in high school didn't quite align with the other kids, I did my best not to be snobby about it but the truth was I thought most of the shit my friends were listening to wasn't interesting. couldn't get into the pop punk shit, found ska kinda boring, the hip-hop stuff too gimmicky, fuckin' hated Linkin Park...it felt a bit isolating, I *wanted* to like what they liked, I just didn't. The Moon & Antartica on the other hand really made my ears perk up, felt like it had so much more depth musically and emotionally, also I loved that it was a proper album with a beginning, middle, and end. In fact I was a little humbled when I realized it was probably better than almost anything I had. this CD was the soundtrack to our first cars, our first parties, our first times experimenting with this and that, I guess it'll always be special for that.

kind of funny in retrospect to find out this was actually pretty big at the time. I had no idea. when Float On came out I was like, uhhh holy shit, that weird band my friends got me into actually made it. I didn't realize how primed they were for a hit like that.

This was the first CD I got for myself - as in, the first I bought with my own money. That was in 2002, I believe, and I was 13. Modest Mouse were ubiquitous in skate videos at that time, and skate videos were how I discovered music. These days, I consider an album from 2-3 years ago to be “new”, then it seemed like it belonged to the ages. I had a very similar experience as frogbs re: Float On, felt weird that the band I *ahem* talked about with strangers on niche online forums, were now all over the radio.

This album still feels fresh to me now

proper album with a beginning, middle, and end

The structure of this album is so immaculately assembled. The first half with all these individually amazing songs that each sound pretty different from each other, introducing the emotional and musical color pallet that the album will paint with. So many instruments, harmonies, arrangements, tempos. Then you suddenly plummet down into "The Cold Part" > "Alone Down There" > "Stars Are Projectors" (I really think of the whole thing as The Cold Part suite), with the last track slowly reintroducing some light into this grayed-out landscape of hopeless desolation that you somehow found yourself in. Then followed by the ultimate chaser in "Wild Pack of Family Dogs", with that clean acoustic and woodblock. I have thought about starting a thread for 'palate cleansers,' where an album gets heavy and then makes an abrupt shift to sweep your ears clean for the remainder. "Wild Pack" is the first thing I always think of, alongside "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" on Blood on the Tracks. From there on the arc kinda flattens out for me, though it ends strong, but that middle piece is so visceral and palpable, nothing like it.

I probably would have voted "Stars Are Projectors" or "Gravity Rides Everything," but "Tiny Cities," "3rd Planet," and "Lives" are close behind. And "The Cold Part" still one of the most singularly evocative tracks I've ever heard.

I learned to play guitar to this and in the aeroplane over the sea. Have 12 years of employment to thank for it. Could never stomach any modest mouse outside of this, the frequency of the whine got to high or the weight of the woe too heavy. I think the cosmic theme provides a counterbalance that pulls out the best from this band: Brock had to look outside of himself (to an extent). Great set of tunes. Love reading your posts

i'm with you H.P., there's no other MM that I ever put on. I picked up with them on this one, and felt like Good News was fine but didn't really have anything to add to what I love about this one. After that it's definitely diminishing returns. And while I've tried with Lonesome Crowded West once or twice, it's never clicked. You might be hitting on why -- that "cosmic theme" elevates this to really be a unique object of art

I get nostalgic about the '00s when it comes to Modest Mouse, this was probably the album that got my attention but I went back to the previous one and loved the next two as well...then gradually drifted away from them because that was it, I don't see another studio album listed until 2015, and in hindsight that feels very strange. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank topped the charts and it felt like there'd be a lot more to come, or at least another new album by decade's end. I don't know what happened - maybe exhaustion? - but I'll have to revisit their stuff one of these days.

lonesome crowded west is amazing and imo better

no idea what i voted for back in the day, but today it would be for the bass line in 'tiny city made of ashes' (oh no!)

also i can remember a long-forgotten dc-based blog trashing them for jumping to a major for this. 25 years is a long time

and/or cities, whatevs

Lonesome Crowded West is one of my favourite albums of the 90s.

the songs on lonesome are better but moon hangs together better as a whole

I like the first two just fine but they're both a bit of a slog in places. This is by far their best album imo. Still a thrilling listen 25 years later.

the songs on lonesome are better but moon hangs together better as a whole

yeah, I think this is the correct take. I listen to individual songs from the first 2 (and also Building Nothing out of Something), but Moon & Antarctica is the only one that I always listened to from beginning to end.

I think I listened to the 2 next albums by them a couple of times each but disliked both.

Is Good News a New Jersey?

feel like the one after it would've been. but idk if it sold all that well. did "Dashboard" get any serious radio play?

in my memory yes

we were dead fits in that it charted better & "dashboard" peaked higher on the hot 100, but it was also a much better album

We Were Dead is definitely the better New Jersey candidate - GNFPWLBN was their first to go platinum.

I liked Good News a lot way back when (sucked in by Float On) and played a few songs yesterday for the first time in years and years. I can hear now why it's got a bad reputation. This is punk-folk music, granted a little sparkly but, where's the energy?? There's no oomph! Is the drummer to blame?

Float On didn't sound great anymore either, but The World at Large was still good awesome.

Hmmm, "good awesome" ? I didn't mean to be equivocal, it *was* awesome.

the thing is when We Were Dead came out I was living with folks who were anticipating the shit out of it as were several of my closest friends so I was hearing "Dashboard" constantly in my own world. looking at the tracklisting though I remember very little outside of "Fire It Up". Good News I recall a lot about, though it's mostly how I always think the first 3 tracks (not counting the intro) always sucker me into thinking this album is better than it actually is. "Bury Me With It" still hits pretty hard though, kinda the last hurrah for Brock singing like a rabid dog. I saw them on the WWD tour and it def felt like they'd lost their edge, don't get me wrong they were tight but Brock seemed kinda bored and nothing interesting happened

crazy to think they've only done two albums since then and I have no interest in hearing either, I've taken everyone's word that they suck. even my buddy who *still* has Modest Mouse bumper stickers on his car hasn't heard the last one

I really loved We Were Dead, I played the shit out of it all year and in hindsight, it just fit my mood at the time (lot of ups and downs but basically a lot of reasons to be angry and unhappy). I don't think it could ever connect as much anymore, but I still love it for Johnny Marr and could tell he was bringing a lot to the table - he's all over it, cramming all these fills into every nook and cranny. I can still remember all those bits and pieces and it's probably my favorite album of his guitar work outside of the Smiths. But even though it topped the charts, I was surprised it placed much lower than their last one on the Pazz & Jop poll - I think #50? - so I'm not surprised if I'm in the minority in loving it that much at the time.

FWIW, I've only seen Modest Mouse in the mid-'00s and later (alas, never with Johnny Marr), but they were at best "okay" when I caught them, never great. I never looked into bootlegs, but I just figured they weren't all that good live.

only time i ever saw them was a year before Good News was released. they opened with "bury me with it" - a move that completely caught me off guard but worked in their favor because all the new tracks they were playing fit in with the moon and prior material. i remember the opening appalachia(?!) act came out for several numbers including a monumental take of "cowboy dan".

I saw them a couple of years ago at Roskilde, and heard the new one quite a bit in anticipation. It was an ok concert and the album is also ok, but not necessary in any way. I kinda got the feeling Isaac Brock didn't want to be the biggest rock star in the world anyway, so it all felt a bit by the numbers.

These days, I consider an album from 2-3 years ago to be “new”, then it seemed like it belonged to the ages.

I still feel the same about albums before I started paying attention to modern music, which is summer 2000. Kid A is a new album, XTRMNTR belongs to the ages...

“dashboard” was on the radio every single day, was an airplay juggernaut on alt and rock stations

Several years worth of programming directors at my college radio station forgot to erase "Dashboard" from current rotation on the IR, thus I was hearing it on air well into 2014.

"Bukowski" is often my favorite MM song.

Saw them once and they suuuucked.

good news is spotty with high highs, haven’t revisited we were dead in a while but i am the kind of sap who falls hard for songs like “missed the boat”

"The View" is the Good News track I remember liking best

These posts are all super interesting to me. At the time that We Were Dead came out, MM really was not an ILM band - I remember the handful of posts really just being like "what is Johnny Marr thinking?". Great to see fans here, and representing some different timelines/journeys with the band. My partner and I were on a road trip last week and, prompted by this thread, ended up sound tracking it with an impromptu Mouse marathon. It honestly ruled.

For me, M&A was 100% the summer-after-high-school gateway to indie rock and beyond. But it was also the gateway to Modest Mouse's 90s records, and for me, Lonesome Crowded West and Building Nothing Out of Something really are the core of the canon. The rangey, looping, hypnotic, scratchy, poetic, all-over-the-map emotional mess quality of those is just incredible... so many phrases and guitar parts that are just lodged in my brain forever.

They lost something as time went on - the rockers got more straightforward and less desperate, while the ballads shed the haunted dreamy qualities they had on stuff like "Broke." The last thing I really dig most of the way through is the Ugly Casanova album. But at least half of Good News and at least half of We Were Dead are both solid in my book.

Oh - and I think LCW works incredibly well as an album, but I'm also very attached to the vinyl track sequence, which adds "Baby Blue Sedan" and, crucially, has "Lounge (Closing Time)" way down as the penultimate track. That move by itself makes it make WAY more sense as an album, IMHO!

see also: Modest Mouse: The POLLsome Crowded West

Lonesome Crowded West is still my favorite. M&A is great, when it came out it really felt like they were stretching in the best way. Bad News felt like their pop move but it didn’t bother me. It was exciting to see what the band was capable of. After that they seemed to run out of gas. I should bust out We Were Dead and pay more attention to Marr’s guitar. I totally forgot he was on it.

I guess seeing them suck in concert and put out a middling album plus the rape allegations against Brock and I was done. I don’t know what ended up happening with the latter. It hasn’t soured the older music for me necessarily but I’m never in the mood to listen to a guy shouting like a drunk anymore.

building something was good and promising
lonesome crowded west is all-time
the moon & antarctica is really great

'float on' is a good song and 'bury me with it' is better but beyond that no

LCW has such an amazing realness to it sometimes, feels like the kind of shit that could only come out of some small town where the sun doesn't shine very often. also think it's cool that it begins and ends with a bang