Modest Mouse - An Eraser and A Maze
Grief is a powerful muse for songwriting. Long before An Eraser and a Maze came into existence, the future of Modest Mouse seemed to be in question to those watching from the outside. One of the band’s founding members, Jeremiah Green, passed in 2022 after a short and horribly fast battle with cancer. Vocalist Isaac Brock remained the sole founding member of a band he began with his friends as a teenager. What do you do in that scenario? It seems impossible to know the answer unless life has thrust that situation upon you.
Brock reflected later that putting the band down was never an option, stating in an interview, “I didn’t have a question as to whether I was continuing as Modest Mouse, because that’s not an option for me. I’ve been doing Modest Mouse since I was essentially sixteen, seventeen years old.” An Eraser and a Maze, Modest Mouse’s eighth studio album and their first since the death of Green, is the band as they once were, what they are now, and what they strive to be in the future. Brock makes bold, quirky, vivacious indie rock, and An Eraser and a Maze is the continuation of that legacy, from the opening notes of buzzy alt-rock number “Picking Dragons’ Pockets” to the concluding “Impossible Somedays”.
Existentialism and grief play a key role in An Eraser and a Maze, and Brock brings with this collection what may be one of the band’s best songs, the heartfelt “Third Side of the Moon”. It’s a remembrance of drummer Green, and a longing for Brock to remember every single detail of his friend before his passing, like his eye color and the words that he spoke. We’ve all lost someone, and it’s the kind of song we can all relate to. “Remember Yourself” wanders off into an ocean of contemplation, worrying about one’s own demons leading them into the abyss with lines like “Sometime I’ll be dead and gone/Sooner than I hope, but I hope I’m wrong/Well, remember this when I’m gone/Remember yourself, not me”. At one point, on “Dogbed in Heaven/Give It A Skeleton”, Brock’s character jumps between living in heaven and finding the courage to get up off the couch and take a shower.
“I Can’t Talk Right Now” finds Brock singing in a hushed baritone, whispering about a relationship that seems to have all of the benefits but none of the commitment, like the whole thing is a pointless effort, but an ability to send texts and have some form of communication with someone, anyone, in a lonely world. “Speak ’N Spell (Or Not)” is the most upbeat track on Maze; for a few minutes, those verses of depression are gone, and Brock declares, “Life is fucking awesome, and I know that it is/I know this because I’m living it”. The confidence is there.
While Brock is the sole founding member of Modest Mouse, the album is a work of brilliant musicianship. Several drummers were brought in for various tracks, as not to simply replace Jeremiah Green, including Janet Weiss, Damon Cox, Drew Tachine, Anthony Lopez, producer Jeremy Sherrer, and former member Benjamin Weikel, who recorded Good News for People Who Love Bad News with the band in 2004. Russel Higbee’s basslines are a standout piece of instrumentation on Maze, particularly on opener “Picking Dragons’ Pockets”, along with the countermelody sections of “Speak N Spell” and “Absolutely Necessary Never”. So many different keyboards and guitar sounds - including slide guitar, lap steel guitar, pedal steel guitar, and a 12-string - are incorporated throughout, giving the entire record an aura that is eerie, whimsical, and lush all at the same time.
Most of the album is a reflection on life, where we go, and what happens after we are gone. There are a few nonsense songs, namely the thirty-second “Stoner Party”, and the literally named “Song About Nothing”. The album ends with “Impossible Somedays”, a track that confronts the realities of living life, how even when you try as hard as you can to maintain composure, some days are just difficult. Brock sings of how “it’s not enough just being here or just simply being alive/Although nothig stays the same the whole time/Well, everything is impossible if you don’t even try to try/Although no one stays the same the whole time”. It’s not necessarily a negative or a positive ending, but it’s a reality. Living with depression and anxiety is a bitch. It’s nice to hear songs like this from Modest Mouse that make you know that even if you’re struggling, even if life is kicking you in the teeth, you’re not alone.
