It’s been 26 years since The Lonesome Crowded West was born into the world, and The West feels twice as crowded and twice as lonesome as it did all those years ago. But Modest Mouse? They’re still touring. They’re still drawing enormous crowds on a Wednesday night, in a city that’s not their own. And we’re still in the crowd at Bayou Music Center, singing along.
Issac Brock, fearless headman and poet, doesn’t care about your overly produced, pitch corrected melodies. He’s not interested in the world’s love affair with safe, mediocre Spotify-primed records wherein marketability trumps musicality time and time again. He writes songs in the 2020’s, just as he did in the early 1990’s, before the fame.
Today, Brock performs with an ever transforming ensemble. What ever tour you catch the band on, it’ll look a little different from the last. If you google their band members you’ll be presented with a 2 page matrix of headshots, like a IMDb cast page full of some of the best rock musicians around, including a violinist, and more percussionists than you can shake a (drum) stick at. And the band sounds exactly as big as it is.
Light design for the tour is by Nathaniel Beckett who has designed stage lighting for The Used, We The Kings, and various major sporting events. His concept for the tour is dynamic and full of life and color, like a giant, stadium-sized kaleidoscope. After so many dark, dare I say, atmospheric, rock shows lately it was refreshing to seeing Modest Mouse play to a rich, vibrant, and (sometimes even) bright lightscape.
The band played through 3 decades of repertoire, saving their obvious hits like “Float On” and “The Whale Song” for a long encore. The tour will continue through the U.S. until late September with Pixies and Cat Power joining them in August.
Set List:
Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine
Dramamine
Breakthrough
Dashboard
Broke
Fuck Your Acid Trip
Wooden Soldiers
Satin in a Coffin
King Rat
Night on the Sun
Lampshades on Fire
Back to the Middle
Polar Opposites
Bury Me With It
Spitting Venom (added moments before the show)
Encore:
The Whale Song
Custom Concern
Float On
Gravity Rides Everything
Styrofoam Boots/ It’s All Nice on Ice, Alright
Tip: If you’re a super fan and are looking for a show to travel to, I strongly recommend their September 21 stop at Santa Fe Opera. The open-air stage sits in the middle of the New Mexican desert facing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains offering a concert experience that’s nothing short of spectacular…as long as it doesn’t rain.
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