Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse is an American alternative rock band that forms in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington, and is active to the present. Its original lineup consists of Isaac Brock on vocals and guitar, Jeremiah Green on drums, and Eric Judy on bass. The group’s membership later includes Dann Gallucci, Tom Peloso, Jim Fairchild, Johnny Marr, Russell Higbee, Lisa Molinaro, Joe Plummer, Benjamin Weikel and John Wickhart, alongside Brock, Judy and Green.

Background and sound

The band is associated with alternative rock, art rock, indie rock, post-hardcore and slacker rock. Its name comes from a phrase Isaac Brock reads in Virginia Woolf’s The Mark On the Wall, where the working middle class is described as “modest mouse-coloured people”.

Brock’s childhood is marked by frequent moves with his mother. After his mother leaves Brock’s father for his uncle, the family moves into a trailer, but Brock has no room there and stays in the flooded family house until police evict him. He later lives in a shed next to his mother’s house, and it is there that Brock, Green and Judy first begin making music.

Early releases

In 1994, the band records its debut EP, Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect?, at Calvin Johnson’s Dub Narcotic Studios, and it is issued on K Records. A single follows on Sub Pop, recorded by producer Steve Wold at Moon Studios. Wold also plays on later Modest Mouse albums, although he is never an official member.

After moving to Up Records, the band releases several recordings made at Moon Studios, including This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About in 1996, a double LP produced and recorded by Wold, and Interstate 8, which is also produced by him. In 1997, The Lonesome Crowded West, recorded at Moon Studios by Scott Swayze, becomes the band’s breakthrough album and earns a cult following. It is widely regarded by critics as one of the defining indie rock albums of the mid-1990s.

Mainstream success

Modest Mouse signs to Epic Records and releases The Moon and Antarctica in 2000, its first major-label album. The record brings alternative radio success through the singles “3rd Planet” and “Gravity Rides Everything”. Isaac Brock also releases an album with his side project Ugly Casanova on Sub Pop.

In 2003, Jeremiah Green leaves the band and is replaced by Benjamin Weikel and Dann Gallucci. In 2004, the platinum-selling Good News for People Who Love Bad News appears, featuring the hit singles “Float On” and “Ocean Breathes Salty”. Green later returns, while Gallucci leaves the band in August of that year.

Tom Peloso, who already plays several instruments on Good News for People Who Love Bad News, becomes an official member in 2005. In 2006, Johnny Marr, formerly of The Smiths, joins as an official member. The group releases We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank in 2007. Its singles include “Dashboard”, “Missed the Boat”, “We’ve Got Everything” and “Little Motel”, and the album enters the Billboard 200 at number one. James Mercer of The Shins provides backing vocals on three songs.

Later releases and activity

In 2009, the band issues No One’s First and You’re Next, an EP made up of unreleased songs from the Good News and We Were Dead periods, plus two previously released tracks, “I’ve Got It All (Most)” and “King Rat”. The video for “King Rat” is directed by Heath Ledger. That year, Johnny Marr leaves the band and is replaced by Jim Fairchild, formerly of Grandaddy.

Modest Mouse performs at festivals during 2009 and 2010, including the main stages of the Reading and Leeds Festivals in 2010. The band’s next full-length album, Strangers to Ourselves, appears in 2015. Five singles precede it: “Lampshades on Fire”, “Coyotes”, “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box”, “The Best Room” and “Of Course We Know”. The album cover is an aerial photograph of an RV resort in Mesa, Arizona.

Jeremiah Green dies of cancer in 2022.