{"id":716390,"date":"2026-06-05T08:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T08:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/716390\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T08:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T08:26:09","slug":"modest-mouse-an-eraser-and-a-maze-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/716390\/","title":{"rendered":"Modest Mouse: An Eraser and a Maze Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Isaac Brock brought about 2,400 of his disciples aboard the inaugural Ice Cream Floats, a festival cruise during which his band Modest Mouse<\/a> performed three sets across a four-day journey between Miami and the Dominican Republic. Brock, initially reluctant, wanted to route the ship from Seattle to Alaska, figuring it\u2019d be a logical backdrop for the Pacific Northwest band\u2019s songs about isolation\u2014he only acquiesced to tropical waters so that their \u201cdumb rock music<\/a>\u201d wouldn\u2019t disrupt northern nature preserves. Three decades since Modest Mouse\u2019s debut album and two since \u201cFloat On<\/a>\u201d propelled them to MTV stardom, a cruise might seem like a late-career Hail Mary, or at the very least an odd match for Brock. As he tells it on An Eraser and a Maze, he, too, is trying to make sense of the state of Modest Mouse today through the lens of his own conflicting identities: a beloved outcast, a contentious hero, and an understated rebel who\u2019s managing to mostly keep it together.<\/p>\n

An Eraser and a Maze is Modest Mouse\u2019s first album since the passing of founding drummer Jeremiah Green, who died shortly after they released 2021\u2019s The Golden Casket<\/a>, leaving Brock as the band\u2019s only remaining original member. Where The Golden Casket felt uncharacteristically polished, Brock says he went more instinctual when writing An Eraser and a Maze: \u201cI just turned my filter off more and just let it all happen,\u201d he explained in a press release. With touring member Damon Cox filling in on drums on most tracks, the album also marks a bit of a recalibration for Modest Mouse, indie legends who are actually signed to an indie again\u2014Brock\u2019s own Glacial Pace\u2014after five albums with major-label support.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

As is his wont, Brock ponders mortality on songs like the soporific acoustic ballad \u201cRemember Yourself,\u201d spouting a lot of advice you\u2019ve heard before. On the humming, hi-fi folk tune \u201cDogbed in Heaven\/Give It a Skeleton,\u201d he mulls over his bucket list and how much he\u2019ll be missed in the afterlife, but the main takeaway is that Brock\u2019s nervy wail is still just as robust as it was on Good News for People Who Love Bad News<\/a>. Charli XCX\/Sky Ferreira producer Justin Raisen brings some haunted synth-pop via \u201cRotten Fruit,\u201d also chiming in: \u201cInside of every grave I know I\u2019ve found a favorite friend.\u201d The vocal feature, and the bass-overblown track itself, feel out of place: a forced crack at something different that comes off as filler.<\/p>\n

More often than not, An Eraser and a Maze makes you wish Modest Mouse had been more deliberate in sharpening these no-filter moments, especially as the nondescript instrumentals regularly blur into the background\u2014a few exceptions are Janet Weiss<\/a>\u2019 kinetic drums on \u201cLook How Far\u2026\u201d and Russell Higbee\u2019s melodic bass that takes the forefront on the serene closer, \u201cImpossible Somedays.\u201d Brock almost gets there on the reverb-soaked \u201cThird Side Of The Moon,\u201d singing in what sounds like genuinely drunk bereavement: \u201cMy heart pumped faster than could possibly be right\/I read in a magazine the day before you only get so many thumps in your whole life.\u201d The main difference between Brock\u2019s current musings on his own existence and the ones he divulged in his early career is that now, he understands that he\u2019ll have one hell of a legacy to leave behind\u2014\u201cSooner than I hope, but I hope I\u2019m wrong,\u201d he clarifies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, Isaac Brock brought about 2,400 of his disciples aboard the inaugural Ice Cream Floats, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-716390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}