The Lost and Found | Modest Mouse | The Lonesome Crowded West LP 1997

It was sad to see the demolition of the Northgate/Northpark mall in the northeast side of El Paso recently go down. Driving by one day it caught me by surprise to see the building that had the movie theatre, half blown up. You could see inside at the stairs and seats inside the theatre, where as a kid I would collect a dollar’s worth of change (usually pennies) to watch a movie with my cousin.

The place is now completely gone and soon a new structure will erect once again to gain our consumerist new interest. Those images of skating in front of the Dillard’s, or the video games at Boomerangs are just memories now.

Modest Mouse could not have been more prophetic on their 1997 album The Lonesome Crowded West. Singer/guitar player and main songwriter Isaac Brock had issues with strip malls in what he calls the “paving of the west.” The landscape was changing across America and shopping malls were sprouting everywhere ready to take your money. They were not happy with the transitional times, and shopping malls were just a product of this consumerist boom happening at the time. They didn’t like it.

In 1997, Lonesome Crowded West sounded fresh. People were growing out of the whole pop-punk thing that happened in the early 90s and grunge was already old news. Modest Mouse was a band that helped transition the listener’s ear back over to the sounds of what was going on in the underground, in a time when a lot of the earlier underground bands had gone mainstream.

Taking elements from Built to Spill and the unconventional approaches of Sonic Youth, the buzz Modest Mouse created made everything that came before them seem dated. Music can define an era and this was the new sound of the times.

What makes this album exciting was its contrast in what popular music was sounding like at the time—slick. Even grunge and punk music of the time had good production. But its gritty-ness and lo-fi sound is what gave this album its charm. The spontaneous one take feel on songs line “Convenient Parking” showcase the angular guitar chops found all over the album—the guitar strings bending so hard they teeter on tones that seem out of tune but somehow comes together into this sweet and frantic melodic sound.

On “Doing the Cockroach” the intensity of the album continues with Brocks going bonkers screaming more than singing, with furor. The music has a steady groove at times, can change at any moment, and go in a different direction changing the pace, but still keeping its intense flavor.

Modest Mouse went on to have a string of great albums which include Building Nothing Out of Something and The Moon & Antarctica. The band even reached huge commercial success with their album Good News for People Who Love Bad News which included the single “Float On.”

The tongue in cheek cynicism the band project is a realistic look at what was really going in America, more of a realization than just a downer; they tell it like it is with no sugar coating.