If you were around and listening to the radio in 2004 when Modest Mouse released its fourth record, “Good News For People Who Love Bad News,” you may remember feeling like the gears of time or of popular taste had come unstuck and something strange had happened.
The single “Float On” was actually a hit — you could hear it at the mall — but it was poetic and unusual, pointing back to the indie rock of the ‘80s and ‘90s like Pavement and Polvo.
Modest Mouse often sounds like the Clash at its “Sandinista”-era weirdest, without the overt political concerns. The band doesn’t fully mask its emotional fragility with layers of artifice. Guitar sounds bend and wobble in a sort of melted droop with bright flecks sprinkled over top.
Singer and frontman Isaac Brock has a way of piling up words to suggest a type of logical fog where things either cancel themselves out or short-circuit. “We’re lucky that we’re so capable to forget/How lucky we are, that we are, so easy to forget,” sings Brock on the title track from Modest Mouse’s 2015 release “Strangers to Ourselves.”
Brock’s songs are funny and smart, but also deeply sad sometimes. He writes about regret, messed-up decisions, impenetrable interpersonal confusion, existential fatigue and abiding doubt.
Modest Mouse performs at the Grand Theater at Foxwoods, 350 Trolley Line Blvd., Mashantucket, on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $70. foxwoods.com
