Modest Mouse

How long could I go without reviewing an album that I've come to consider a masterpiece...allow me to tell you why. Like many of Modest Mouse's earlier conceptions and albums, this one has the quirky sounds that keep your ears turned and listening. Like no other, the lips of the singer/guitar player Isaac Brock must be as a supernova and then a black hole. Always at the top of an emotional range, a feeling of anxiety, loss, seperation, and sadness invade this cd from in and out explaining from the first song stating, "How the world will end," and to Wild Pack of Family Dogs where the author's baby sister is carried away "oh well." If it wasn't for the symmetry of the music, some of the songs on this album would make almost no sense at all, but there is a balanced harmony achieved here that I've never experienced with any other completed album. The best song on the album is a road song like no other. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes is an emotional rollercoaster singing to the anger and violence of living everyday life. "I'm heading down the road, on tiny cities made of ashes, I'm gonna punch you in the face, I'm gonna punch you in the glasses/ does anybody know a way a body could get away, does any body know a way." I can feel the anxiety of living that is present as the author of this novel/music tries to shrug off the feelings. The guitar here is magnificent as well, with loops and masterful folk like playing that just keeps you listening as well as some Hendrix like playing in A Different City that always either gives chills or sticks in the head like toothpaste. In the aforementioned song, I almost feel as if a leader could be talking to his followers. Inverted Leader speaks: "I want to live in the city, without no friends and family, I want to look out my window on my color TV." It's a tragedy that many people live in this state. The next song is just a calming piece of beautiful melody and music, The Cold Part, singing, "So long to this cold cold part of the world."

One evening at Denvers Bluebird Theater, where Modest Mouse was playing on a bill with fellow Northwesterners Built to Spill, Graham broke a second-floor window and stole into the backstage area. As Modest Mouse came off stage, he was excitedly waiting for them, blood streaming from cuts on his arms and face that hed received from stray shards of glass. Chanting Thisll do it under his breath, Graham introduced himself to the source of his enlightenment.

Here again the facts become obscured. While each band member remembers Graham saying Thisll do it repeatedly, they disagree on how he referred to him-self. According to Brock, he introduced himself as Ugly Casanova. Green remembers Graham saying Im Isaac, and Judy remembers Im Ed. Perhaps the only deciding factor would have been tour companion Chris Majerus, who had run off to get towels and bandages for Grahams wounds.

Though Graham was obviously unbalancedor because of the factBrock, Judy and Majerus all took an immediate liking to him. In an enchanted tribute to Graham, Modest Mouse began to use Ugly Casanova as their publishing name. The three even persuaded a few labels to release limited-edition 7-inch singles of the songs Graham had sent them. But after briefly visiting each label in the summer of 98 to deliver his efforts, he disappeared and has not been seen since.

A year later, in the summer of 1999, the labels received belated thank-you notes from Edgar Graham in enve-lopes that had neither postmarks nor return addresses. At the same time, Isaac Brock received a sheaf of letters which profiled the running mental state of Graham/Casanova. Like the others, these letters had no indica-tion of when they had been written or delivered, except one which had been dated a week earlier. The first fifteen pages were filled with nonsensical rants indicating that Graham had lost all touch with reality. The remaining 13 pages contained 13 songs about Grahams life and his barren home, his hopes and his delu-sions.

The lyrics and music were practically illegible, but over the next few weeks Modest Mouse tried to make sense of them. Starting from Grahams scratchy messages, the band began to assemble their new album. Due to that illegibility, the resulting collection of songs have become more a illustration of Modest Mouses own musical and lyrical style than of Ugly Casanovas submissions. But the spirit of the album is believed to be that which Graham/Casanova had meant to convey. The Moon and Antarctica is the name of the album.

Themes of lost identity, spiritual betrayal, social and mental isolation, occasional self-loathing and ques-tions to the origin, nature and intent of fate aboundas do the figurative portrayals of Grahams own past. The opening track, Dark Center of the Universe, is an introduction to the frustration and social isolation felt by a man whose potential search for his own soul resulted in the adoption of all the facets of anothers life. Consequently, the song stands as a realization of the fragility and futility of his situation. Yet the album does not simply dwell on a feeling of isolation, but reveals---just as did Edgar Grahams lettersthe path and progress of his various transformations.

The Cold Part is the point of origin, the departure from a frigid physical surrounding and the hope for a change from all which fate has dwelt. 3rd Planet traces the evolution of loss, as paranoia encroaches upon Grahams psyche and a distorted vision of creation ends up as a lack of self-identity. While a sense of self-loathing is evident in the only set of lyrics Modest Mouse were able to recover (I Came as a Rat), Graham most often expressed a carefree nature in the face of obvious adversity. Always present behind Paper Thin Walls, it was this side of him that Modest Mouse first saw in Denver, and the one by which he will hopefully be remembered.

With Edgar Grahams disappearance came feelings of personal betrayal on the part of one whose emergence had raised so many questions and concerns. Thus ended a melancholy existence, one ultimately led under the title of a Perfect Disguise.