Review Summary: So long.
Isaac Brock breaks his jaw a few weeks before recording
The Moon And Antarctica and the result is a sprawling masterpiece, soaked in atmosphere and profundity bleeding through its pores. Go Figure. Modest Mouse span across a galaxy of fifteen cosmic endeavors writing about the universe and how there is no heaven or hell. But on
The Moon..., they've created their own hell to which there is no escape.
The Moon... is completely desolate, perfectly explaining its album title, what with the two loneliest places around and in the middle of them is Brock, lost at the ocean of space. It exists on the fringe, and by doing so creates a wonderful sense of comfort, as if a little cabin on the edge of the world that only you know about. Never before has Modest Mouse sounded so essential than here, escalating their pungent, moody indie rock into great heights. The Modest Mouse you know and love on
The Lonesome Crowded West is still here but is incredibly hazy and
freezing, being almost smothered by this quiet intensity that lurks in the untouched shadows of
The Moon's many canyons. This is perfectly captured on the empty "The Cold Part".
So long to this cold, cold part of the world, Brock whispers over soaked atmospherics, an empty field with trillions of stars above. That's the beauty of
The Moon & Antarctica: after you get past the classic cuts here, there is still so much more to discover, another world filled with the darkest cellars to which the sun can never reach.
