Review Summary: There's so much beauty it could make you cry.
Everyone creates memories when they listen to music. Whether it's a song that was popular in high school that brings you back to where you were puking in your girlfriend's car after prom, or the smell of grandma's house that comes rushing back to your nostrils when you hear that old country song, our emotions are always deeply tied to music. Everyone also has that little gem of an album from a little gem of a band that helped them get through a certain rough time in their lives, or maybe documented a period of good times. This 2001 release-the unsung counterpart to their opus The Moon & Antarctica-will always be an extremely intimate record for me. You see, I had this friend, and we had a vehicle with a working stereo. Miles of country Illinois road, a bowl, and a couple cigarettes is all we ever had. I can still see the trees pass by us in swirls of green and brown as we cut through the woods in perfect sync with the music. The first time I heard this album, I was just getting to know this band. At this point, I've heard the lo-fi post-punk early days of Modest Mouse, and the mainstream Float On sounds. "You need to hear this, it's my favorite." She slides the CD into the slot. As soon as the first crackly lines of the first song are played, and the thick atmosphere of Willful Suspension of Disbelief surrounds me, I was taken into a whole new realm of human frailty and mortality.
Needless to say, I promptly dove into the rest of their catalog. These songs are perfect companion pieces to The Moon & Antarctica. I can also see why these tracks were left off the record though. As a whole, this selection is more laid back than the edgier sound found on Antarctica. There is also a little more positivity from Issac here, even if it is laced in sarcasm, like in You're The Good Things.
You're the good things, yeah that's you...
You're the icing on the cake on the table at my wake
You're the extra ton of cash on my sinking life raft
You're the loud sound of fun when I'm trying to sleep
You're the flowers in my house when my allergies come out
You're the good things...
Always a clever bastard, that Issac Brock. Catchy tunes like Good Things and the addicting stomp of Here It Comes can stand alone to be lead singles if they were given attention. At the same time, the band find themselves at their most psychedelic and atmospheric, brushing into instrumental territory with The Air, which serves as a trippy reprise to the slow-burning opening song. There is one repeat track here, though. I Came as a Rat is here as well as on The Moon & Antarctica, but here we are given a longer instrumental outro. It doesn't harm the EP at all. And of course, a Modest Mouse album never feels quite complete without a "long song". Night On The Sun is definitely an underrated fan-favorite. A simple nostalgic guitar riff, a spacey drum line left to resonate the quiet spaces of your soul, and strange vague lyrics about vampire fetishes make the almost eight-minute track hit you with the weirdest case of the feels. But it is not until So Much Beauty in Dirt that I broke down and cried. There has never been a song that was one minute and twenty four seconds long that has brought up so many emotions to the surface at once. Wow, I'm not lying when I say his poetry is brilliant and excellently delivered here.
Out of breath and out of cash, find yourself watching M.A.S.H. every night
On the couch, woman says "let's take a drive down south"
Roll down the windows and open our mouths
Taste where we are and play the music loud
Stop the car, lay on the grass, the planets spin and we watch space pass
Walk a direction, see where we get. I never knew nothin' so there's nothin' to forget
We'll get real drunk and ride our bikes
There's so much beauty it could make you cry
It's our emotional attachments to music that bias our opinions about it until the end of time, and that's why I will always love the art form. If you can create the right memories with the right set of songs, even if it is a small collection of b-sides from an indie band that can be shrugged off by any critic, that is all that should matter. It's your personal favorites that distinguish you from everyone else. Everywhere And His Nasty Parlour Tricks will zone you out, make you question existence, and remind you to fall in love before we disappear so long to this cold, cold, part of the world.
