Courtesy of Modest Mouse Wiki  

I‰’m writing this on Valentines Day.  I already regret picking this album.  This is a day where I am trying to stay ‰positive‰’. Of course I decide to listen to 1996‰’s most painfully melancholic album.  Modest Mouse‰’s first full-length album, This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, shook me to my core, as it does every time I sit down with it.  If you feel lost, listen to this album; it will reassure you that you aren‰’t alone.  If you feel like you might be ‰on track‰’, listening to this album will make you question why you even want to be on track.  I‰’m going to talk about Modest Mouse as if Isaac Brock is the only person in it.  He‰’s not.  But, due to the tragedy of foresight I know that many members will leave and Modest Mouse is tied together mostly by Brock, possibly because he‰’s a little tough to surround yourself with.  The other musicians that helped make this album are Eric Judy and Jeremiah Green.  The woman that sings in the background of three of the songs is Nicole Johnson.

The album opens with my personal sad-drunk anthem “Dramamine‰Û.  Dramamine is a song about the contradictions of life. Isaac Brock‰’s voice leads us through the juxtaposition of what it means to be sad.  “Dramamine‰” starts with the lyric “Traveling, swallowing, Dramamine‰” which is repeated once in the song.  We take our motion sickness pills after we start traveling.  Shortly after he sings “We kiss on the mouth but still cough down our sleeves.‰” Dramamine starts out slow and sad, with a catchy guitar led melody.  Isaac Brock‰’s anger shows through with him sing/shouting “I’ve said what I said and you know what I mean/But I can’t still focus on anything.‰Û  Brock‰’s harsh emotions are mirrored by the dreamy echoing guitar, which I think is meant to display that his anger is usually masking his melancholy.  Most of the songs have this sort of emotional play, where Brock sings something painful that rings true, but the music shows that he is omitting something else.

The fifth song “Lounge‰” starts off sort of beachy and almost like pop.  It‰’s the kind of song you‰’d expect to come out of Olympia, WA in 1996.  Brock‰’s voice is a little raspy, so if you weren‰’t listening carefully you wouldn‰’t have caught that the opening lyrics are “She was going with a cinematographer/Everyone knew that he was really a pornographer‰Û.  The implication of this lyric is further brought up with the juxtaposition of the lines “And everybody was feeling fine‰” versus the later line “ And everybody as feeling high‰Û.  Brock is showing us that even the happy beach-y style is really just a way of denying reality.  He‰’s really trying his hardest to make us as sad as he is.

In Novocain Stain, Brock seems lighter and at the same time more defeated.  He says that “TV stained my memories‰” and goes on to describe the sprawling development of malls and chain restaurants.  He ends the song with the lyric “No I don’t like this change of pace‰Û. If any of ya‰’ll have been to Issaquah, WA, Brock‰’s hometown, you‰’d know that this is an extremely pertinent influence on brock‰’s opinion of capitalism.  This song ends with screeches.  Those screeches leads into the solemn bass of “Tundra/Desert‰” which begins with him discussing how “childhood makes ya‰Û.  Brock‰’s gut reaction to his surroundings is something I feel like a lot of folks connect with.  He wants to run away but sees that fraught with hypocrisies, he wants to reject where he is from be he knows he cannot reject himself.  He is angry at the world but sometimes he laughs at it.  Mostly I think he‰’s sad.