Modest Mouse

★★★★

The Golden Casket COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP/MC

Tightly woven set is the first in six years for indie rock stalwarts.

Isaac Brock is anxious as anyone about our always-on digital world. “Peeping Toms at every window, dangling a leash for your throat,” he observes with his trademark infectious melancholy on Never Fuck A Spider On The Fly. On Japanese Tree, he demands, “When can we leave?” Brock – with original drummer Jeremiah Green, producer D. Sardy and the lineup from Strangers to Ourselves

(2015) layering dense sheets of percussion, keyboards and guitar – tries to understand where to go, and whether he’s already there. A quarter of the songs mention “figuring it out”. Yet it often sounds as if Brock actually has. As he ultimately assesses on We’re Lucky: “These are the stars and these are the seas, these are the places that we’re lucky just to be between.” Life is a casket. And it’s golden. Both are true. Brock apparently has figured it out.