Customer Reviews

Lonesome Crowded West

5 star:		(125)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I really can't believe it. I bought "The Lonesome Crowded West" about a month ago on the strength of "The Moon and Antarctica," to which I was addicted from early June to late July. The discordant, fractured first tens seconds of "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" left me coughing and sweating in my earphones, but I did not dare remove them. About 70 minutes and 15 tracks later, I stood up slowly, walked across the room to the stereo, hit play, and returned quietly to my chair to do it all over again. I'm still sitting there.

Let me try to place "The Lonesome Crowded West" in its proper historical context. It is, in my humble view, the single best American rock record of the 1990s (with Slint's "Spiderland," Pavement's "Slanted and Enchanted," and Brainiac's "Bonsai Superstar" running close behind, but behind nonetheless). It is a long, monumental, messy, glorious bleat on the order of "Exile on Main Street" or "London Calling." It sounds like a cross between The Pixies and Polvo, with a smidge of Neil Young thrown in for good measure. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

Besides "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine," my highlights are "Convenient Parking," "Cowboy Dan" and "Polar Opposites." Every tune's got the shtank, and that's what matters.

From a contemporary rock music standpoint this album should not work. Strained, dischordant vocals, erratic changes in tempo, wacky and unconventional lyrics, and to top it all off a violinist?? Isaac Brock is either a mad man or a genius, I would estimate the latter. Brock successfully assembles this melange of eclectic and disparate rock sounds into 15 melodious and head nodding indie rock tunes. With clever guitar hooks accompanied by solid rythmn, Modest Mouse accomplishes what most indie bands can only aspire to: A fresh and coherent low-fi indie rock sound.

I can't tell you how impressed I am by this album. Songs like 'Conveinent Parking' and 'Doin' The Cockroach' highlight Modest Mouse's uncanny ability to deliver tight and often explosive indie-alternative music.

If you've never heard of Modest Mouse, or you've never listened to their music, YOU ARE MISSIONG OUT! I strongly suggest you give 'A Lonesome Crowded West' a try. It's the most cohesive and emblematic of the band's talent and style.

If you're just discovering Indie-alternative music this album will make you an instant fan!

I am an admitted latecomer to Isaac Brock & Co., having discovered them about 3 years ago with The Moon & Antarctica. That quickly rose to the top of my indie rock pile, with its fascinating lyrics, idiosyncratic and epic songwriting, Brock's demented and quirky "white-trash Black Francis" vocals (that is a compliment people), diverse tunes, and concept of alienation and disaffection in a huge, empty universe. Good. Really, really good.

Since then, I have taken the liberty of digging through their catalog, listening to everything from This Is A Long Drive... to their "sellout" Good News For People Who Love Bad News. All of it is strong, often outstanding. But if you want the ultimate manifesto of Modest Mouse's ability, you need only go to The Lonesome Crowded West.

It's just... perfect. Try naming another 70+ indie rock album that doesn't have a scratch of filler or throwaway song. The band belts out tune after tune with a sense of consistent quality that not Pavement, Sonic Youth, or even The Pixies could match in their heyday. The sound quality is raw compared to the more recent releases, but it's still amazing how HUGE and expansive Modest Mouse sound, even when pared down to the base elements of guitars, bass, drums, and vocal (with an occasional touch of violin). It's Neil Young-meets-Pixies-meets-Tom Waits-meets-Pink Floyd (yes, really!).

The album kicks off with Teeth Like God's Shoeshine. This might be my favorite Modest Mouse song of all time--it's the shortest 7-minute song I've ever listened to. Starting in disjointed and lurching rock, moving to a more tender, quiet breakdown, and then busting out an absolutely GLORIOUS crescendo of guitar squall and thundering beats. And it performs this pattern TWICE before resolving. I could listen to it all day.

Following that is the quieter, downbeat and weird Heart Cooks Brain (love the roughshod turntables); the Pixies-esque Convenient Parking; the goofy, folk-ish Jesus Christ Was An Only Child; the minor-key, quirky indie dance of Doin' The Cockroach; the eerie, desolate Cowboy Dan; the melancholic Out Of Gas; a searing near-punk tune in Sh-t Luck; the drunk sentiment of Polar Opposites; the beautiful, acoustic Bankrupt On Selling; and finally a two-part semi-acoustic jam (driven by Jeremiah Green's deft drumming) to conclude the whole deal.

The lyrics are consistently amazing throughout. Always engaging, never pretentious, they focus on themes of existential loneliness and anger, bitterness, and rough living without being the slightest bit whiny. Brock's unique voice just seals the deal with his unusual, but very listenable (at least to my deformed ears) and genuine inflection. His is a voice that sounds wholly in touch with the subject matter, whether it be an angry cowboy pointing his gun skyward at God, wandering the backroads of the American Midwest, lost deep within consumerist Hell, or comparing his brain to a hamburger. Most bands would kill to write a song as good as Bankrupt On Selling, and Modest Mouse don't even think enough of that one to print the lyrics for it in the booklet.

Anyway, this is definitely one of the finest indie rock albums of the '90s (along Slint's Spiderland, Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted, and Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I). I can't think of an album I've listened to more lately than this one. More addicting than crack.

Modest Mouse isn't going to hit you at first. they're not a band that will instantly seize you with some mindblowing riff or a groove that instantly draws you in.

It's the type of CD that you listen to at your friend's house and wonder 'what is this garbage?'. the wild tempo shifts, the confusing (if even barely coherent) lyrics - the unrelenting enthusiasm. think pavement meets fugazi meets southern twang. needless to say it's something that grows on you. you wont even know what's happening to you - it'll just be one day while you're reading or not even paying attention.

it hits you hard and you're hooked.

this is the sound of a band at the beginnings of their genius - where they started to grasp their own potential. their next cd starts to exploit their vision to the fullest - where the major label can afford them a large enough tapestry which to paint their vision.

the genius of 'ok computer' was planted in 'the bends'. the madness behind 'moon and antartica' is seen here. this cd isn't to miss. not if you care at all of the sad state of music today.

Have you ever heard the expression "no man is an island"? Have you ever wondered how that makes remotely any smidgen of sense in this desolate, lonely sea of monotonous civilization we call "the West"? And will the West ever be won by the working-class, convenience store urchins of the sprawling American suburban madness? According to alt-indie mainstay Modest Mouse in its masterpiece homage to rock's less attractive subject matter, we are all islands, working and writhing in a sea of machinery, our emotions so grilled by monotony that we don't even feel for one another anymore...or do we?

Can you get claustrophobic "from the top of the ocean, from the bottom of the sky"? What would happen "if you could compact your conscience...and sell it save it for another time"? Give this gem of a concept album a listen, and you'll see why "The Lonesome Crowded West" is essentially the indie rock "Dark Side of the Moon," in that it dives into a psyche given to moral emptiness and unconsciousness, only this particular unconsciousness is spurned on by environmental factors beyond our control. We're forever products of our surroundings, and instead of being corrupted like we are in the city, at the endless outskirts of suburbia we are sucked dry of all motivation, creative energy, and stamina to overcome the challenges of everyday monotony and hopelessness.

You get the idea a few bars into "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" that Modest Mouse advocate the traces humanity neglected by the metropolis-centric mass media, and the songs' metaphor-happy lyrical content essentially glamorizes the populace that the self-referenced city trendsetters so lovingly yet condescendingly label "trash." Yet with "The Lonesome Crowded West," Modest Mouse subvert your consciousness to represent musically the lost, shunned worlds of trailer parks, truck stops, and the barren wasteland T.S. Eliot never knew: Suburbia.

Highlights include the delightful "Heart Cooks Brain," an astounding chain of analogies wherein the heart and the brain take on roles you would have never thought possible on your SATs; the rather bittersweet "Polar Opposites" and "Trailer Trash" (a meditation on frustration); the lyrically bored yet musically exciting "Convenient Parking"; the fascinating, fury-driven sonic prose "Doin' the Cockroach"; the highly cinematic "Lounge (Closing Time)"; and the triumphant piece of closure, "Styrofoam Boots / It's All Nice on Ice," which explores the moral direction of the spiritually devoid.

All in all, I highly recommend this album.

Modest Mouse are one of the better bands to come out of the Northwest Indie scene. A friend recommended them to me as "a Poor man's Built to Spill". That's not a fair comparison really; outside of a penchant for guitar noise and whiny vocals, these bands don't really have all that much in common. Lonesome Crowded West is probably their most solid album from beginning to end. If you like Lo-Fi indie rock ala Pavement's early albums, check this one out. The whole album is good, but songs like "Heart Cooks Brain" and "Out of Gas" really stand out.

I first heard Modest Mouse on a local radio station, I was instantly attracted to their unique pixies influenced sound. Lonesome Crowded West is Modest Mouse at their best, great rock. The album opens with the thrashing "Teeth like God's shoeshine" a 6 minute rocker, followed by the excellent "Heart Cooks Brain", in my opinion the best song on the Cd, yet one of the least played. Later is the song "Jesus Christ was an only Child" a unique folk sounding song followed by the pounding "Doin the Cockroach" which has a great bass and excellent use of guitars, one can't help but sing along with the lead singe Issac Brock. Following instantly is the dynamic "Cowboy Dan" another great rock song and then the somber "Trailer Trash" showing Issac Brock's great writting of lyrics. Lonesome Crowded West is a Cd that shows the band's dynamics, with a blend of folk, rock, country, and blues.

I'm not one to throw around five stars willy-nilly, but if there's a band that deserves them, it's Modest Mouse.

Even though I consider Lonesome Crowded West to be the best Modest Mouse album so far, I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to the band since some new-comers might be put off by the "rawness." If you're new to MM or indie in general, you should probably start with Good News for People Who Love Bad News or The Moon and Antarctica. Once you're aware of what the band is all about, get this album and prepare to be blown away.

Everything about this album, from the lyrics to the instrumentals, melds together like one incredible epiphany that will change the way you listen to music for the rest of your life. Even the title is simplistic genius.

Buy this CD, and you won't be disappointed. Cowboy Dan and Trailer Trash are worth the purchase price alone.

If you're a fan of theirs, go get it now. If you like Indie at all, get it. I'll go ahead and extend this to everyone reading this- you'll like it.
This is a lot rougher and a lot wider ('Ocean Breathes Salty' excepted, on the last count) than their newest, and a lot rougher than 'The Moon and Antarctica'. This is what they were supposed to sound like.
I'm pretty into Indie, and out of all that I've heard, Modest Mouse is right up there (though very different from) Godspeed You BLack Emperor and Trail of the Dead as far as size goes. This music is big, despite the limited instrumentation here, in a Pink Floyd kind of way. It's also infinitely more honest.
And that's the big thing. This is one of the most honest things you'll ever come across. Brock doesn't stop. I admit that I've broken down from 'Bankrupt on Selling' and 'Trailer Trash'. How they made 'Cowboy Dan' so extremely desolate is beyond me.
Easily one of the best albums of all time. Everyone should give it a try. It took me a while to really come around myself. You owe it to yourself, though.
I thought it was strange that this was recommended to me from my five star rating of On the Road. It's really not that weird. There's something similar there. If you have any interest in the west, I guarantee this will go down as an important interpretation of the decline thereof.
This is important, very true, art. And it's not lame about it, either. No posing. They'll go down as one of the most important bands of our time (with My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead, definitely), will be admired for a long time. Brock's an excellent minor poet in T.S. Eliot's sense (there's nothing wrong with being a minor poet).
A thousand years from now someone will find this like Pound did the troubadors.
If you're in high school you have no reason not to get it now. It's getting me through senior year, God knows.
The best parts- near infinite relistenability, the length, and no (maybe one '**** Luck', that a long shot) weak tracks.
Easily in my top.five.albums.evar.

Modest Mouse is so great at creating emotion with music. They do this with Issac's amazing voice, screeching or soothing guitars, and an amazing blend of rhythem and chaos.

If you must have one Modest Mouse cd, get this one. It will take you on a journey through the west where you can meet cowboy dan, producing my favorite piece of imagery in a song ever. "He points his rifle in the sky and says: God if I have to die you will have to die!" I can just see a drunk man with nothing to lose giving his life to the devil.

I listen to this CD much more than I should, and you should too. Get this CD! It's well worth your money.