Tag Archives: Modest Mouse

Top Ten Excellent and Angry Albums (Needed These Days)

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10. The Times They Are A’Changing (Bob Dylan) He spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished/ And handed out strongly for penalty and repentance/ William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence

9. Animals (Pink Floyd) Have you heard the news?/ The dogs are dead/ You better stay home/ And do as you’re told/ Get out of the road if you want to grow old

8. Never Mind the Bollocks (Sex Pistols) Blind acceptance is a sign/ Of stupid fools who stand in line

7. Fear of a Black Planet (Public Enemy) Elvis was a hero to most/ But he never meant shit to me/ That sucker was/ Simple and plain/ Motherfuck him and John Wayne

6. Live Through This (Hole) Make me real, fuck you/ Make me sick, fuck you

5. Battle for Los Angeles (Rage Against the Machine) An army of pigs try to silence my style/ Off ’em all out that box/ It’s my radio dial

4. The Lonesome Crowded West (Modest Mouse) Drunk on the Amtrak/ Please shut up!/ Another rider/ He was a talker/ Talking about TV/ Please shut up!

3. The Fragile (NIN) Like you said, you and me make it through/ Didn’t quite, fell apart, where the fuck were you?

2. Let England Shake (PJ Harvey) I have seen and done things I want to forget/Soldiers fell like lumps of meat/ Blown and shot out beyond belief/ Arms and legs were in the trees

1. Rid of Me (PJ Harvey) I might as well be dead/ But I could kill you instead

Finding an Antidote for Poisoned Music

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The shitty (tragic?) parts of my life have tended to poison things that I love, including favorite music. Low, a band I once saw in concert every year, has been off my playlist ever since Mimi Parker, a member of the duo, died suddenly of cancer. It’s been three years now. As much as I miss the music, I can’t listen. Not yet.

Alan and Mimi play Low music in Fargo (2010)

A similar grief hit when my friend Gord Downie, the lead singer of The Tragically Hip, died although I was more prepared for his death, given his prognosis. It wasn’t grief as much as mourning, as Joan Didion differentiated in The Year of Magical Thinking. I attended one of his final concerts, and then he died. As much as I miss him, his music provides comfort.

Gord singing and contorting at Fort Henry in the ’90s

The poisoning is more intense when it comes on a personal level. I very much enjoyed Modest Mouse until a student I associated the music with committed suicide. And then, as they sing on Polar Opposites, I’m trying to drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away.

I’ve had a couple of relationships turn terribly sour and drag the joy of the music with them. The death of an ex made The Red Hot Chili Peppers feel dark and awful, while Sufjan Stevens, once a great passion, was dragged into a quagmire of triggering memories. I’m working on getting his music back into my head.

Sufjan plays Christmas Unicorn at The Bowery Ballroom

In the end, this self-cleaning of music, loving it once and then not, allowing it to creep back in, knowing it again, almost feels like wisdom, or at least the closest I will ever get to a thing like that.

Phil plays one of his last shows at The Capital Theatre

We’re only Carbon Neutral

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The Marquis de Sade writes in his controversial novel Justine that we, as a species, tend to exaggerate our relevance:The power of destruction is not in the gift of Man. He may, at the most, change the form of things but he does not have the power to annihilate.We're only Carbon NeutralOh, what does it matter to Nature’s eternal creation that the mass of flesh which today makes up a biped creature should be tomorrow reproduced as a thousand different insects? We're only Carbon NeutralI say this: all men, all animals, all plants that grow, feed and are destroyed, reproducing themselves by the same means, never truly die but merely undergo variation and modification.

Modest Mouse offers a similar sentiment in their 2004 song Parting of the Sensory. We're only Carbon NeutralI’d start at the dawn/Until the sun and fully stopped/Never walking away from/Just a way to pull apart/Dehydrate back into minerals/A lifelong walk to the same exact spot/Carbon’s anniversary/The parting of the sensory.

In other words, we’re just not that big a deal.