Isaac Brock
Modest Mouse
Over the past quarter century, Modest Mouse frontman Issac Brock has served as indie rock's resident backwoods philosopher, pondering his infinitesimal place in the world at large and seeking balance in a universe governed by polar opposites. On Modest Mouse's earliest records, he was surveying the changes in the world's physical landscape from the windows of the tour van, lamenting the displacement of natural beauty with big-box blights. The Golden Casket, the band's seventh-studio album, is exploring the degradation of America's psychic landscape through the glass of the smartphone screen.
Whether Isaac is singing about electromagnetic waves, taking his kids for a walk, or tripping balls in the forest, The Golden Casket is ultimately a plea for harmony-between nature and technology, between progress and self-preservation, between hope and healthy skepticism-in a world that has seemingly lost all sense of it.