Life has been moving pretty fast lately. Ridiculously fast. Today was no different. Honestly I can’t believe that it’s already Thursday {and I’ll be traveling for the weekend so this is, unfortunately, the last post of this week}.
Anyway, as I was sitting at work today the sometimes awkward tunes of Modest Mouse kept me focused and working hard. To be honest it was one song in particular that really kept my attention today. There’s something about the lyrics of this song that are impressive and abrupt at the same time. There is an urgency in this song that is impossible to ignore.
mp3 : Modest Mouse - Spitting Venom
I love the opening lines and the clever twist of the phrase “We were spitting venom at most everyone we know / If the damned gave us a road map then we’d know just were to go.” But what really makes this song into a brilliant piece of music is the musical break that begins around one and a half minutes into the track. This is music that is meant to be turned up annoyingly loud and blasted throughout your house {or work, if no one else is there}. The musical shift is followed by an equally impressive lyrical onslaught which carries the song for another two minutes before Spitting Venom segues into the third act where atmospheric and fuzzy guitars blend with repeated vocals. Long story short it is simply a good song.
If you’re looking for some more Modest Mouse this track hails from their album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank (amazon) (itunes) and it serves as an excellent starting point to really get to know what Modest Mouse is all about.
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This song is full of contrast, it pulls you from an understated comfort into lesson learning of the most important kind. It then delivers you home; the sense of quietening resolution it leaves evident in Brock’s voice. The song provides an exacerbation of feeling, for listener and for the band, each and every time the recording is played out in all it’s illustrious technicolor.
Modest Mouse continue to impress, and they must.
well said mate, well said indeed.
One of the most lyrically interesting songs to me off of that record is ‘Parting of the Sensory’. Whenever I wanna get my hate-of-the-oil-industry on, I put that song on. It starts of so incredibly slow, lulling you into this cranky sort of daze, and then they punch it with the change-up, furiously lamenting the theft of my carbon!
Great stuff.
I can’t think of anyone else who comes close to the lyrical clever-ness of Modest Mouse. Thoughts?