MODEST MOUSE – STRANGERS TO OURSELVES

First new album in eight years! Modest Mouses 22-year career is something of a Cinderella story, in which the Washington scrappers have succeeded against all the odds. Frontman Isaac Brock is a throaty, barking philosopher, like Tom Waits shouting into a wood-chipper. Their sound has been consistently wonky, evolving from awkward fuzzbox pop (2004s Good News For People Who Love Bad News) to sea-shanty concept albums about drowned sailors (2007s We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank). Theres a gloomy, fatalist streak to their lyrics, too. Hardly mainstream fodder, then, but while their impact in the UK extends little further than the popularity of 2004 single Float On, Modest Mouse have become a popular concern back home. Their songs have been covered on American Idol; theyre regular festival headliners; and We Were Dead. – featuring the writing talents of Johnny Marr, who has since left the band – was a number one hit on the US Billboard chart. Coming after an eight-year break for the quartet, Strangers To Ourselves delivers some of their most brilliantly deranged moments yet. From grizzled, slap-bass disco freakouts (The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box) to campfire lullabies (God Is An Indian And Youre An Asshole) this impressively unpredictable record veers down wildly different paths, in ways no previous Modest Mouse album has dared. Brocks lyrics – dense thickets of imagery and introspection – remain cohesive. “Another branch on the tinder-bound tree/Birds flying lower, lookin downwards to feed”, he sings over tender acoustic guitar on Coyotes.