The Moon & Antarctica

by

Modest Mouse

Edit

The year two-thousand reminds me a lot of 1990. Various dance pop groups and a style of mainstream that has completely stangnated. Most of my interest with rock music has been waiting for the next Radiohead album. In spite of this I try to keeb tabs on the "indie-rock" culture, and pick up an occassional album I really enjoy. After seeing a couple of really favorable reviews of The Moon and Anarctica I decided to pick it up when released. My first impression was that it was very good but now it has become one of very few rock albums in the past five years which have earned near non-stop rotation in my CD player.

Modest Mouse is one of a very selective group to successfully blend all of the streams for rock's leanings into post-modernism. Basically its clear to that this album stems from the indie scene but has grown to be a bit more well-rounded. There's a lot of Pixies pop-punk present but also a lot of Radiohead or Pink Floyd spaciness. A lot of the lyrics (which are brilliantly nonsensical) even have some kind of space theme going. Producer Brian Deck has done a magnificent job giving the songs an extremely detailed and dense sound while retaining the raw, bleeding, amateurish sound of the band.

In the end what makes the album is a strong group of diverse sounding songs that are seamlessly brought together for a nice cohesive listen. Many of the songs feature delicate echoey guitar lines, while others are impressively visceral punk outings. Thrown in occassionally are odd supporting instruments like banjo or violin. The songs are complicated enough to take a bit of getting used to but hold on up for obsessive listening. Modest Mouse are all still in their early to mid-twenties and have substantial room to polish and complete their sound. Given that Moon and Antarctica is a near-masterpiece and my early pick for album of the year. Time to go check out the rest of their catalogue. Highly recommended for those who looking for freshness in their rock.

I'm not rating on the quality of the music, because if you are buying vinyl, chances are you know that the music is good.

So, I was a little surprised to see some vinyl shavings still on the record when I took it out (kinda just on the edge of it). When I went to put it on my turntable, I was also surprised to see that the hole was too small on the vinyl for my turn table. I took a knife and cleaned out some of the shavings that were left from production, and was able to play it after that.

I was very pleased with how it was sounding and playing until I got to the last song on side 1. At the very end of it, the song is continued into the lead out and the lock ring (the very widely spaced grooves near the center of the record). It just happened to be perfect disguise (one of my favorite songs on this album). The last 10 seconds or so of the song or so are cut off. So at about 2 minutes 30 seconds into the song, it just continuously loops for 1 second. It is only this side, and not on the other 3 sides. I'm not sure if this is worth returning, because this would be an issue with the record company (more than 1 copy of this album has this issue).

Other than those two things, it sounds great, looks great, and was delivered in a timely manner. If it wasn't for that issue, I would have given this the 5 star rating I had hoped to give it.