Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica

Modest Mouse's prior studio release to Good News for People Who Love Bad News is of a very similar standard of high quality. What I find interesting about them is their ability to cover a wide range of styles and moods despite the singer Isaac Brock's voice's tendency to sound a bit silly. It's perfectly suited for offbeat songs like "3rd Planet", and you'd think it wouldn't work as well if they tried to get harder, but it does. "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" is the perfect example of how he makes it work. The verses feature a double layer in both a falsetto and baritone that mix effectively, and the chorus is shouted and distorted. Mix in a great bass line and atmosphere and you have a song way cooler than you'd expect out of the band that did "Float On".

"3rd Planet" is fairly innocuous and catchy on a casual listen, but if you pay attention to the lyrics it's deeper than meets the eye and sets the tone for the whole record. "Gravity Rides Everything" follows it well, with pleasant strumming and a nice refrain. "A Different city" is another example of how they can make a serious track just as well as a quirky one. As the album goes on, some tracks are musically interesting but a bit overlong, sticking around when they don't need to, and others seem like silly throwaways, even if they're much darker when you pay attention to their lyrics. Still, although it's not as tight as it could be it's still quite good most of the time, solidifying Modest Mouse as one of my better liked artists. "What People Are Made Of" is the last song, and puts it together well, although the version I have is a rerelease that tacks on four extra tracks, all of which are alternate versions of existing songs, three of which appear originally on this very album. They don't add that much, but it's hard to say more music is a bad thing.