My Favorite Bands’ new Single Makes Me Feel Old
And I sort of am…and that’s ok.
Modest Mouse holds a special place in my memory bank. I discovered the band at that pivotal time of young adulthood when I was about to leave Uni and forge my way in the world. The great big world. Some may call it vast; Modest Mouse would call it the Lonesome Crowded West. And in reality, I was legit living in the West, and it was crowded. But I wouldn’t call my experience lonesome. You see, before the days of social media there was the Modest Mouse Message Board. It was hosted by Sony and we had our core group of weirdo’s. Dedicated to the connection and anonymity of the MMMB (and with seemingly not much more in common) I had found a virtual misfit tribe. In a more practical sense, think about the format of modern day Reddit. It was like that, but there were only 12 of us. It was special. Also, no one in my real life knew. So my lonesome time in the crowded west was spent with the online fan base as I simultaneously sought to compile the entire Modest Mouse catalogue via illegal downloads. I spent roughly 30 minutes-3 hours of my day waiting for my Modest Mouse songs to download from Napster. These downloads had about a 50% success rate in hitting completion. I sure hope that the statute of limitations has expired on Napster being illegal and/or I am the worlds worst criminal. Also, I was stealing my neighbors WiFi. This probably contributed to the slow rate of download and even worse, the poor rate of completion. As I have just confessed to my two greatest crimes, we are forever bonded. Read on.
I continued to love Modest Mouse and started spending more time around the music industry. My taste was dubbed as liking ‘musicians music’, which made me feel superior in a fashion that I hadn’t earned. I last played an instrument 10 years prior to this and had never (then nor now) been in a band. I was never big in Japan. I did however get advanced copies of the latest Modest Mouse albums and free tickets to shows, so I was placated. Audio satiability was satisfied.
Recently I started listening to Modest Mouse’s albums from decades ago. It all started when in the subreddit ‘documentaries’ someone posted this untitled piece. It was 36 minutes that peaked the warm fuzzies. I decided to go further down this rabbit hole and followed up the viewing of the untitled piece by watching the official Pitchfork piece. I watched the piece by Wieden + Kennedy. I watched a lot. And later that night I had a playlist on the speaker as I made dinner. I was happy to be reunited with an old friend.
Earlier this week news popped up of a new album. Cool. Then yesterday the first single was released. Great! But. But. In place of the artful energetic emotion filled scream spot that most Modest Mouse songs hold dear was a group chorus pop hook that made me question my ability to adapt and overcome. I immediately started looking at forum’s and realized that I was old. I was being labeled as the group that would probably be upset that it doesn’t sound like [insert album from 20 years ago]. Followed by the ‘others’ who stated they liked the new sound and congratulations to Modest Mouse for continuing to evolve.
What a great outlook those ‘others’ have to this recent development! How novel! It’s inspiring and I’m going to give it a try. I’m going to embrace those group pop chorus hooks. And I have a plan. As I listen to the new single on repeat, I will be receiving a giant bear hug from a good friend. I may have to pretend to cry over a fictional tragedy to gain further extension of this hug. At some point my friend may question why the new Modest Mouse single is playing on repeat? I’m just waiting for it to sink in. The bear hug and poppy chorus have got to be the master combo to bring in a new era of Modest Mouse warm fuzzies. If the plan doesn’t work out, then I will just go back to living under a rock in a cave where all the music is from the 2000’s. Wish me luck.
