The Oral History Of Modest Mouse's "The Lonesome Crowded West"
I talked to all of the principals behind one of the best indie LPs of the 1990s
On November 18, 1997, a trio of young punks from Issaquah, Washington named Modest Mouse released their second album, The Lonesome Crowded West. It was not an immediate sensation — by the time the band released their third LP, The Moon & Antarctica, in 2000, it had moved only about 60,000 copies. But over time, it earned a reputation as one of the great indie-rock records of the 1990s, a distinction confirmed by Modest Mouse launching a 25th anniversary tour this month.
Filled with long, winding, and raging songs about urban sprawl and eccentrics from the underclass trying to make their way in the American Northwest, The Lonesome Crowded West only seems more unique as the years go by. Listening to it, I’m struck by how hard guitarist-singer Isaac Brock, bassist Eric Judy, and drummer Jeremiah Green grooved. Years before it was possible for a single person to make an album and post it online, Modest Mouse came up the old fashioned way — they toured relentlessly, played countless dives, and in the process developed a kinetic chemistry that bounds out of the album on tracks like “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” and “Truckers Atlas.”
As a songwriter, Brock stands alone as the rare observer of the nation’s working poor, writing about this marginalized population with rare insight and sensitivity on the semi-autobiographical “Trailer Trash” and a flair for the surreal on the David Lynch-like “Cowboy Dan.”
Modest Mouse didn’t achieve mainstream success until their hit single “Float On,” released seven years after The Lonesome Crowded West. And yet it’s the album, more than any other, that bolsters their status as one of the best indie bands of their era. To celebrate the record’s anniversary, we talked with the band and their associates to get the behind-the-scenes story of how it was made.
Read my oral history here.