Modest Mouse stays modest in Chicago

August 25, 2009, at the Aragon Ballroom

By Genevieve Diesing
Published: August 29th, 2009 | 9:45am

You’ve got to give Modest Mouse fans some credit. Hundreds of them packed the Aragon Ballroom intent on rocking out to the indie rock band that’s no longer so indie, and coughed up $30 for a bill that didn’t even include an opener. And rock out they did, even though half the music they were singing along to was drowned out by the speaker system.

It was really a pity to hear vocals and guitars on songs like the deliciously un-tethered “Bury Me With It” completely muddled by reverb, or the slinky standup bass line in “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” lost in the muck of noise. The song’s low-octave, rhythmic lyrics came across like scraps of sound.

Certain tunes proved more acoustically friendly than others, such as “Dashboard,” a newer track (off 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Epic). During this song, Isaac Brock’s raucous vocals came across sharply, and the elaborate instrumentation sounded as crisp as on the radio. This was the climactic moment of the evening that brought bodysurfers to the top of the crowd’s sea of pumping fists.

The hot and stuffy hall turned otherworldly when the tinkling notes of “Gravity Rides Everything” enveloped the room. The twanging strums of “Dramamine” escaped the dreaded blaring speaker effect and penetrated the room as effectively as the brilliantly terse lyrics — “We kiss on the mouth but then cough down our sleeves” — before the song unwound into a long, drawn-out jam.

The songs were alternately soft and boisterous — and the band, outfitted humbly in T-shirts and baseball caps, mediated between placid stances and crazed foot-stomps and roars.

Noticeably missing from the 90-minute performance was “Float On,” the 2004 hit that put the group on the mainstream musical map and stood to make Modest Mouse far less modest. But pretense never seems to have dripped into the band’s music — their latest EP, No One’s First and You’re Next (Epic), represents the same impassioned and reflective persona that has defined their music for more than a decade.

Modest Mouse seemed to acknowledge this by returning to the stage after 10 minutes of the crowd’s unrelenting foot stomping, hollering, and applause — but not with the hit that was played on every pop station in America in 2004 but rather with the glorious “Paper Thin Walls,” a choice rewarded with ear-splitting applause. Hit or no hit, good music prevails. Bad acoustics notwithstanding, of course.

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For more photos from this show visit Venus Zine’s Flickr page

Modest Mouse official site

Modest Mouse MySpace page

Epic Records