An Eraser And A Maze

The eighth album from Modest Mouse is an end, a beginning and a continuation—all in 15 tracks. An Eraser and a Maze, the eighth album from Modest Mouse, is an end, a beginning and a continuation—all in 15 tracks. The end and the beginning collide spectacularly on “Third Side of the Moon”, one of the most bittersweet and beautiful songs in the band’s three decades. Shortly after a cancer diagnosis, drummer Jeremiah Green died on the last day of 2022; over throbbing bass and snarling guitar, the famously energetic Isaac Brock wonders why he couldn’t pay more attention to his quiet friend, why he wasn’t a black-box recorder to every thought Green ever had. Brock wrote the self-critical homage with guitarist Simon O’Connor and bassist Russell Higbee, part of a new version of Modest Mouse that Brock has steadily built over the past decade. The tandem also helped with the politically disappointed diatribe “Look How Far” and the gorgeous “Remember Yourself”, Brock’s ode to his daughters written amid recent bouts with mortality. After co-producing 2021’s The Golden Casket, Jacknife Lee returns for several tracks here, too, helping Brock build dizzying tunes where anything might happen. There is, for instance, the explosive opener, “Picking Dragons’ Pockets”, with Brock howling about choosing a life of love over hate. And “Song About Nothing” is an absolute highlight, stapling the snarling energy of early Modest Mouse onto a web of unpredictable electronic textures. The band that made Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon & Antarctica can no longer exist; Brock is forging ahead with new collaborators who understand his enduring tight-rope dance between chaos and control, anyway. This is, in turn, as energised and inventive as Modest Mouse has sounded in years.