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While not nearly as satisfying -- or coherent -- as Modest Mouse's two full-length releases, "The Lonesome Crowded West" and "This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About," this new collection does offer a fairly well-cobbled portrait of the band's first five years. It also provides glimmers of the types of songs ("Never Ending Math Equation," "All Night Diner") that Epic undoubtedly hopes will push the group beyond the edges of its indie-only audience.

Listen to Modest Mouse now at Virginemga.com Modest Mouse "Building Nothing Out of Something" Up

Listening to Modest Mouse is a bit like looking at one of those warped mirrors in a boardwalk arcade. The sound is both familiar and perplexing, filled with pleasing hooks and dissonant, disorienting distortion. The most experimental of Modest Mouse songs often sound as if they were recorded in slow motion: Eric Judy's bass oozes, drummer Jeremiah Green sounds like he's pounding on mud and Isaac Brock sings through a glue-filled mouth. Weaving and looping, the songs swirl and repeat with a dizzying narcotic charm. It is the woozy intensity created by these musical ebbs and flows that has become the band's signature formula.

But hidden beneath Modest Mouse's spacey strains is an undeniable, yet somehow elusive bleakness. A sense that all is not right, but what is wrong may be more than any of us really wants to take on.

That sense is fortified by Brock's songwriting. His lyrics hinge on dualities and apparent contradictions. As on "Baby Blue Sedan," where he sings, "I'm lonesome when you're around/I'm never lonesome when I'm by myself/And I miss you when you're around." Other songs are equally as opaque. On "Working on Leaving the Living," Brock repeats "In heaven, everything's all right/In heaven, everything is fine," for the last five minutes of the six minute song, and even that seemingly simple line seems confused and uncertain.

"Building Nothing" is not a flawless collection and is not even pieced together exceptionally well. But for those not yet familiar with Modest Mouse, it offers enough variety to serve as a competent introduction. It's also a must for fans who haven't been able to get ahold of the songs previously released only as singles. And it should be enough to tide over those who just can't wait until the band's answers the big questions on its major label release this spring.
salon.com | Jan. 31, 2000

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