Modest Mouse

Since 1992 · United States

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The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)

Isaac Brock's jittery, philosophical yelp and the band's start-stop dynamics found their widest, sprawling canvas on this double album about the emptied-out spaces of the American West — trailer parks, highways, small towns hollowed out by sprawl. 'Cowboy Dan' builds from a hushed verse into one of the era's most unhinged vocal performances, Brock howling about a man who wants to shoot God. The band's mix of noise-rock abrasion and genuine tenderness never sat closer together than it does here. It remains the most beloved record in a catalog that would later go more polished and more popular.

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Modest Mouse

The Lonesome Crowded West · 1997

Modest Mouse formed in Issaquah, Washington in the early 1990s around Isaac Brock, Eric Judy, and Jeremiah Green, making jittery, philosophical indie rock that treated the emptied-out landscapes of the American West — strip malls, trailer parks, endless highway — as both subject matter and structural principle. This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About (1996) introduced the band's nervous, start-stop dynamics; The Lonesome Crowded West (1997), a sprawling double album, remains the fullest and most beloved expression of that vision.

The Moon & Antarctica (2000), their major-label debut, expanded the sound into something more spacious and produced without losing Brock's yelping unease, and Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004) — built around the unlikely hit "Float On" — brought the band a mainstream audience its earlier records had never sought. Brock's ability to turn genuine dread into something that could still function as a singalong, evident as early as "Cowboy Dan," gave Modest Mouse an unusually wide reach across 2000s indie and alternative rock without ever fully sanding down its stranger edges.