Ironically 'Compact'
When Dean Wareham calls the mid-late '90s "the golden age of the compact-disc business," the emphasis is clearly on the business. After all, the rise and rise of the CD throughout the decade cultivated numerous artistic tendencies, not many of them golden. The most damning was a mass artistic bloating; the jump from a 40-minute LP to an 80-minute CD meant that there was a tendency to confuse length with worth; artists seemingly stuffing every inch of a compact disc with stuff in some attempt to provide value-for-money.
Isaac Brock had long been guilty of over-supply. Amidst a steady stream of singles, EPs, and compilations thereof, the first two Modest Mouse albums —1996's This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About and 1997's The Lonesome Crowded West— were each no less than 74 minutes long. There was no doubt as to the worth of the work that came pouring from Brock's pen —his guitar, reared on The Pixies and Pavement, all oblique angles; his lyrics, conjured on long road-trips, literally bristling with snarky philosophizing— but there were doubts as to his ability to harness his prodigious gifts.
Though it stands at a leviathan 59 minutes and sprawls on a song or two too long, 2000's The Moon and Antarctica marked the moment in which Brock finally funneled his music towards the finality of an album; channeled his manic, mischievous energy in ways wholly beneficial for his art.
Things Fall Together
Perhaps Brock came good because, elsewhere, things were falling apart. He'd been accused of date rape the year before, and was effectively convicted in a trial-by-media even though no charges were laid and the claims later wholly withdrawn. In the middle of making Moon, his jaw was broken outside a Chicago bar. The band were battling the obligatory creative tensions. Drugs and booze were plentiful. The major label that'd just signed Modest Mouse, Epic, were trying to keep their charges on a short leash; demanding compliance with various deadlines.
Amusingly enough, the label were less than happy with The Moon and Antarctica; a little bit when it was turned in, and a lot when it turned out to be a 'commercial flop.' As is so often the way with albums that are, y'know, good, time has been kind to the third Modest Mouse LP; it since earning a reputation as one of the best albums of the '00s.
Coalescing the sentiments Brock had explored across his discography thus far —thoughts that coalesced on the 1999 singles compile Making Nothing Out of Something— The Moon and Antarctica effectively positioned its lyricist as dystopian daydreamer, stranded in the back of a tour van, contemplating the vastness of the universe and his tiny insignificance therein; the repetition of life-on-the-road leading to a state of near-existentialist ennui. Brock announces such on the stirring opener, "3rd Planet," whose chorus pronounces that "the universe is shaped exactly like Earth/if you go straight long enough you end up where you were" as both statement of wonder and lament of 'why bother?'.
These Charms Are Snakes
Whilst Brock indulges in such grandiose navel-gazing, producer Brian Deck —former drummer of genre-splaying rock perverts Red Red Meat— consistently invents new, strangely-charming ways to frame the same observations: unsnaking backwards tape loops, phased guitar tone, and ripples of hand percussion. All these instrumental flourishes and inventive approaches to engineering manage to only heighten Brock's songs, not obscure them.
On "I Came As a Rat," Brock's existentialism borders on nihilism —"It takes a long time, but God dies too/But not before he'll stick it to you"— but the song sounds forever playful; its continuing barrage of sonic tricks framing a stark acoustic confessional as a fearless voyage into an unknowable future. It, as does the whole LP, serves as a leap of faith: band teetering on the brink of collapse and/or commercial success, wholly investing themselves in their leader.
Record Label: Epic
Release Date: 13 June, 2000
