Modest Mouse
Congress Theatre, Chicago IL
February 24, 2005


So this is life in a post O.C./platinum LP/Nissan commercial/Top 40/Grammy nominated Modest Mouse world… being a veteran of the live Modest experience, I was pleasantly surprised.  Seemingly gone was the shoddy musicianship, short set and drugged up, boozehound head honcho Isaac Brock that has plagued past shows I've been privy to. A solid performance from a group of talking heads speaking in tongues in front of a packed house was the replacement, and a welcome one at that.

Opening with a brief poetic moment from a semi-disguised Brock, the band made their way onstage accompanied by back-up musicians that managed to create a more full-sounding Modest Mouse that allowed the band to give justice to their material, especially from the last few studio tricknology-driven albums.

"Everything that keeps me together is falling apart," Brock sang over ramshackle acoustic guitars on the set opener "3rd Planet," before the music bursted into a loud, Pixiesesque (i.e.: soft/loud) dynamic shift that made regular appearances throughout the course of the evening. There was a minimal stage presence between songs, in favor of the songs sort of bonding together and creating an eerie, atmospheric vibe.

There was a certain "Mouse on Prozac" thing goin' on that is a bit associated with their latest (and by far most successful) outing, Good News for People Who Love Bad News; the dark-yet-catchy and ultra melodic (thanks to a brief falsetto) "Ocean Breathes Salty," "The View," and, of course, the uplifting contender for Best Single of 2004, "Float On."

Standouts that evening included the rockin' "Paper Thin Walls," the country twang of "Wild Pack of Family Dogs" and the banjo driven "Bukowski."

The main set closed with the oldie "Never Ending Math Equation," which erupted in a wall of sound that was briefly interrupted a few times with pounding drum rolls.

The band came back for an encore; the dreamlike "The World At large" opened with Isaac singing slightly out of sight, the grandiose build-up of the song ending in an eventually slowed-down orchestra, which led into the closer; a vamped-up, overtly distorted version of "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes," which had the crowd in a frenzy, manically, spastically moving about while Brock's voice shifted from a gravel voiced sneer at "I just got a message that says hell has frozen over," to a panicked shout at "I got a phone call from the Lord, saying 'Hey boy, get a sweater right now.'" The song, and show, ended in a wave of noise and chaos that left an unsettling feeling, hearts pounding, and an impact from the most interesting band to break into the mainstream in forever.