One of the great tragedies of music has been Modest Mouse‰’s association as “that band that did ‘Float On.‘‰” Travel back a few years and you‰’ll find a monolithic trio of albums (and one compilation that shits on most artists‰’ magnum opuses) that embodies everything that makes indie rock great. Modest Mouse is something else. Every member shares a visionary chemistry that other bands can only dream of emulating. Eric Judy‰’s bass adds the expansiveness of the long stretches of highways and deserts that the band uses as its canvas. His slick, rambling melodies underpin the manic genius guitar, gluing the fragmented melodic phrasing back to the whole composition. Jeremiah Green is at the same time wandering, intricate and driving. If it weren‰’t for his occasional fills bursting with a neurotic urgency, his playing could very well be mistaken for dance percussion as it sits in its grooves that are intricate, yet instantly catchy and familiar.

Although this band would be nothing without these two musicians, the real orchestrator of the concoction is Isaac Brock. He comes off as an eccentric goofball with an awkward lisp when he addresses the crowd. Once the band starts playing, it‰’s like he becomes possessed. He shakes as he screams, his wide eyes wander about like a newborn child, and his guitar seems more an extension of his body than an instrument.

All of this makes for a sound that is both beautifully fragile and chaotic, noisy and aggressive, all the while slowly morphing between and blending the two worlds into ethereal bliss. I want to call the lyrics the icing on the cake, but they‰’re works of art that are as virtuosic as the band‰’s music. Isaac touches on themes of death, God, urban sprawl, depression, drug abuse, blossoming and failing love, and being a slave to your own brain and heart. It would be tough to get all this across with an entire novel, but Isaac has a Vonnegut-like ability to package the ideas in understated portraits of everyday life.

Even his ad-libbed lyrics in the band‰’s live jams are more than any other poet could hope to capture. He throws in lines like “You spent most of your life looking for the adult that you are, and you‰’ll spend the rest of your life looking for the child that you were.‰” Of course the only logical song to follow that up with is “Never-Ending Math Equation,‰” starting with “I‰’m the same as I was when I was six years old, and oh my God, I feel so damn old; I don‰’t really feel anything.‰” Every single song has at least one line that could trigger an existential crisis, but there‰’s just too much to cover.

Modest Mouse is like Radiohead in that you can‰’t get one song that embodies the band. The best I can recommend is the very first song from the video below. You get the catharsis and the screaming and the pretty parts, but really you‰’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg that is my favorite band.