The Catalyst spoke with Brock via Zoom.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. Pete Catalyst: There\u2019s a belief that once music turns into a business, or a job, that it\u2019s not so much fun any more. After all these years, for you is it still the great adventure it always was?<\/p>\n
Isaac Brock: The fact is \u2013 the recording, for instance, part of it\u2019s always not been fun. Creating\u2019s great, and the brutal work of getting it right isn\u2019t necessarily fun. It\u2019s rewarding. It\u2019s more akin to going to the gym, which I have very little experience with any more. Where it\u2019s not necessarily fun, but once you get through it you\u2019re like \u2018Yeah! I\u2019m f\u2014in\u2019 great.\u2019 So that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Do you mean the process of finishing the record?<\/p>\n
Yeah. The whole process. Getting to the point where you\u2019ve got an exciting idea you want to record, that\u2019s fine. But then really making it actually land and feel right is f\u2014ing tedious. I mean, picking out microphones is tedious. I don\u2019t love gear in the way that a lot of people might, that would make that fun. It\u2019s like, what works?<\/p>\n
Playing live is fun for the playing live part of the day, but the getting ready and the waiting around is bullshit. I\u2019m about to start a tour, in Florida, and it\u2019s six weeks long. And six weeks sitting on a bus sounds not ideal.<\/p>\n
But once I\u2019m doing it, it\u2019ll be fun.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019re one of those people who turned the studio into another instrument. Is that sense of discovery still there? \u201cHey, let\u2019s put a backwards guitar in here!\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh sure. In the early days of recording, with really, really simple tricks, you\u2019re like \u2018Oh yeah, we\u2019re the Beatles. We\u2019re flippin\u2019 the tapes over.\u2019 When we started, there was no software. If you wanted to do fades, everyone had their position on the mixing console, to do any rides or whatever, to synch things into the mix. Bit of a dance there! And that was fun. Pretty simple ideas feel like grand artistic moves. Again, reversing the guitars.<\/p>\n
Now, the joy of doing that\u2019s been turned into an operation on a computer, and so we have to find new ways to make it hard for ourselves. And we do!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
You said somewhere that song ideas come to you from somewhere in your subconscious. Do you ever write something, look at it and go \u2018What the hell is that about?\u2019<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/screengrab-Isaac-Brock-300x162.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I listen back to the recordings and I transcribe it, like Joseph Smith and his f\u2014in\u2019 magic bag, y\u2019know? Usually it\u2019s like, I\u2019m gonna write this down, whatever I said, because that\u2019s the way the phrasing should work.\u201d Screengrab.<\/p>\n
Almost every time I\u2019ve woken up with a thought and gone \u2018Oh, must get this down\u2019 \u2013 which I don\u2019t do a lot of \u2013 but when I have, and the light of day comes, I\u2019m like \u2018Uh-oh, you don\u2019t know how to spell,\u2019 and \u2018You forgot a bunch of words that would have maybe made this sense,\u2019 or \u2018You skipped something \u2018cause this can\u2019t be what you were thinking, there\u2019s not a complete thought here,\u2019 that happens a lot. And also on the occasions that I have something important that I\u2019m like \u2018I should write this down,\u2019 and I\u2019ll come back to it later.<\/p>\n
And I don\u2019t, and it\u2019s forgotten until I\u2019m flipping through books. \u2018Can I keep this?\u2019 \u2018Should I throw it away?\u2019 \u2018Oh, I was writing out lyric ideas. Close call; good thing I didn\u2019t use those.\u2019<\/p>\n
So that doesn\u2019t really work for me, man. It seems like the best way to go about it for me is when we\u2019re writing music, whether it\u2019s me alone or us as a group, my brain locks into it and the conscious part of it, day to day Isaac, gets pushed aside and this thing that\u2019s been doing all this interesting work behind me, behind the scenes, is like \u2018Here\u2019s what we\u2019re saying.\u2019 And I kind of just sing the shit.<\/p>\n
Then I listen back to the recordings and I transcribe it, like Joseph Smith and his f\u2014in\u2019 magic bag, y\u2019know? Usually it\u2019s like, I\u2019m gonna write this down, whatever I said, because that\u2019s the way the phrasing should work. Then I\u2019ll try and come up with a different way, using my awake brain, to write a song using these shapes. Ninety some odd percent of the time, I just end up going with the words that were there, and it\u2019s better than me getting\u2019 in the way of myself.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sometimes abstractions make for a more interesting song. I\u2019ll think about Dylan and his typewriter, banging out words \u2013 maybe a lot of those songs weren\u2019t supposed to make any linear sense.<\/p>\n
Yeah, he\u2019s a slave to the rhyme. I think he did a lot of \u2018Eh, the listener will figure it out. I don\u2019t even have to know what it is.\u2019 And goddam well I have. I\u2019ve listened to those songs thousands of times, and I get a little bit different every time, because it wasn\u2019t married to reality so heavily.<\/p>\n
I try to make a little more sense than that and things when I\u2019m looking at something. I\u2019m like \u2018Can this make sense?\u2019 But then \u2026 I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
One of the only records I can listen to from start to finish over and over again is Blood on the Tracks. And I think he knew what he was doing on that one. Then I get envious of the storytelling; that\u2019s some pretty deep and detailed storytelling. The details, he\u2019s gettin\u2019 a little Steinbecky on that.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your favorite track?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s that one where he has the line \u2018I can\u2019t help it if I\u2019m lucky \u2026\u2019 oh, \u2018Idiot Wind.\u2019 That\u2019s a good one, just the way it starts: \u2018Someone\u2019s got it in for me \u2026\u2019 The whole thing is great.<\/p>\n
Matter of fact, as soon as I\u2019m done doing interviews, I\u2019m going to listen to that record.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s mellow and mean-spirited. That\u2019s kind of a rare thing. Usually if people are being a little shitty, they like to pick up the energy. I know I do. But that whole record just kinda purrs shittiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Near the end of An Eraser and a Maze, the eighth and newest album from Modest Mouse, there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-397629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}