Freight Isolation: Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West

For years, spokesmen of literature and music have tried to pin down just what makes the bohemian topic of travel, be it aimless or deliberate, so appealing. From Johnny Cash bumming his way through a train ride on his seminal “Blood, Sweat And Tears” to Nick Drake pleading for a ride away from sorrow on “Pink Moon”, there is a sense of alluring liberation. Reveling in the mysticism and often dubious reality of written narrative, themes of vanishing or simply departing one’s strenuous relationship with the world in a cannon ball of dust are the kind of Steinbeck’ian power fantasies that don’t have to play by the rules of rationale.

In a more grounded sense, years before internet culture made music promotion (or skyrocketing artists to mass appeal for that matter) a breeze, touring and traveling cross country was much more of a necessity than it is now. For alternative indie musicians at the outset of late 1990s US this meant packing a van with instruments, personnel and scrambling towards the other venue with the money you made in your last show with physical exertion and sleep deprivation alongside.

Idle hours on the road resulted in observations of the continuously changing landscapes of Western and Eastern America which were becoming progressively more urban and commercialized. “Mall fucked” was Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock’s choice of wording when referring to his hometown of Issaquah, whose rural charm and quaintness was overtook by, what was his understanding, rows of convenient parking, conglomerates, market chains and insistence on trapping dirt and grass under cold and unassuming cement. 

With the collective anxiety of what they saw as purposeless commercial mutilation charged with experiences of touring around the 1996 debut record “This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About”, Modest Mouse left a mark on the alternative rock and indie hemisphere the following year. Accumulated encounters of auto mechanical issues, experience of navigating the country on a limited budget and an ingenious glimpse into the urban sprawl of 1990s America through the lens of a frustrated young mind, 1997 saw the release of “Lonesome Crowded West”. An album whose position in alternative pop culture charts has rarely been questioned.

(Source: Pat Graham)

 

“I was in heaven, I was in hell

Believe in neither, but fear them as well

This one's a doctor, this one's a lawyer

This one's a cash thief, taking your money

Back in the Metro, ride on a Greyhound

Drunk on the Amtrak, please shut up

Staying true to the title, many alternative musicians reveled in their originality and outsider appeal. Bands such as Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins or Radiohead, though not forgoing their pop sensibility, did not hold the hands of music enthusiasts by subjecting them to formulas with culminations evident from the first note struck. A certain melancholy and youthful despair was not uncommon for the time, offering an experience of independent objectified emotion. The context in which Modest Mouse thrived, however, was more akin to an Edward Hopper painting, treading on a kind of dutiful emptiness ravaged with misery and apathetic trifle. 

The haze-like storytelling of “This Is A Long Drive…” is made more specific on the sophomore. Dreamy sequences of vast emptiness and recurring memories still mold the basis of a Modest Mouse narrative but here they feel even more tangible and real. The ethereal and often ambiguous shapes now take form and crowd lengthy lines before vendor stalls, “bleeding out onto the highways” after they’ve taken their time in one of the many conveniently placed parking lots. The band, however, rarely lingers on being too grounded as Brock blurts out tangents of false prophets, atheists being subjected to ridicule and forced to physical labour in heaven, polishing halos and baking manna.

Tracks like the slow burning “Cowboy Dan” are a masterclass at balancing the calm before the storm and the chaos unleashed in its wake. As the track’s lowly plucked guitar notes poignantly sting into the back of the head with their jagged and twangy tone, the pace lazily picks up, as though, breathing a gust of fresh air, thrashing into a desperate and almost forlorn instrumental conclusion. The narrator cries out, succumbing to the hopelessness of the futile uproar at the beginning of the song, perhaps accepting his position and giving into vices.

Though many of Lonesome Crowded West’s themes are not mutually exclusive and can be observed as being intertwined and littered with association. The opener “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” directly references the issues of rapid urbanization, critiquing consumerism and taking jabs at those recklessly engaged in such culture of novelty. A conveniently bottled consciousness or friendships purchased at grocery stores, Brock refrains and calls out the facade of the modern compact existence in a showcase of true honesty that, although subjective, can be an attempt at rearranging one’s own inner turmoil and lack of effort:

“All, all wrong, and it's all, all gone

Or you could add it up and give a shit, give a shit

I'm on the corner of this and this and this and it's

All, all wrong, and it's all, all wrong”

Separate moments in the record truly feel as though influenced by actual events of an extensive touring schedule. As the title suggests, the ten minute epic “Truckers Atlas” directly acknowledges factual realities of a life on the road. From blown automobile gaskets to writings spotted on the stalls of public bathrooms, Modest Mouse, in every sense of the word, logs locations, geographical confusion and a keen sense of periodic loneliness between live shows and idle moments of boredom.

The track is also famous for its almost 6 minute instrumental break after the frantic vocals die down. Somewhere along the recording process, the musicians were simply left to their own wits without the recording being stopped. Stock full of vocal echoes, sonical blemishes that sound intentional, yet were not supposed to appear on the final mix. Brock and the band’s bassist Eric Judy were left to experiment alongside Jeremiah Greene’s hypnotic, ever-looping drumbeat, drawing into the ten minute mark. When thinking of Lonesome Crowded West, “Truckers Atlas” surely feels like an all encompassing magnum opus of the entire track list. 

 

(Source: Pat Graham)
 
“Well when you don’t have anything to leave, touring is super… if you live in a hallway or something, you know or in a shed outside your parents’ house, getting in a van and driving around, *mumbles*. Gas was cheaper as well, you could definitely afford to get paid a hundred and fifty dollars and go to the next town and no one minds sleeping in a van.”

As it stood, Lonesome Crowded West explored the lonesome microcosm that both bound its inhabitants together and savagely ripped them apart by offering more distractions, more ways to subtly detach from reality and mindlessly engage in the faux culture that was being presented to them. A continuous alienation and further disillusionment make up the lonesome atmosphere that is difficult to shake off.  In many ways, though the rapid change in scenery and infrastructure was more obvious in the 1990s due to a very drastic and sudden shift from what once was, aspects of what the album explored are still relevant. 

The band would delve into even more metaphysics and cosmic dread on their 2000 album “The Moon And Antarctica”, yet their sophomore, regardless of personal preference, is still one of their strongest records to date.