There’s just something about that late 90s Modest Mouse sound that never fails to astonish me. I mean, there’s Isaac Brock’s voice for one. But the true defining feature has to be that guitar. The way it can simply rip you to shreds (see “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” for example). But unlike some guitar bands who do their damage with noise, Modest Mouse were something else. Not that they couldn’t get loud. But at their most devastating, the thing that truly took you apart was the loneliness, the isolation, the spaces in between the notes. There was an artful looseness to it – it kept you from ever identifying a center.
But there’s also a curious warmth. Not the heat of passion, or anything so mundane as the comfort of a campfire on a cold night. No, this was something else entirely. Like that instant when you touch something ice cold and your nerves can’t quite distinguish it from heat. Or the way your cheeks flush in the midst of a winter storm. This is the sound of a “Trailer Trash” or the mad rush at the end of “Broke” or the moment about four and a half minutes into “Other People’s Lives” when you feel all the boundaries snap and the world shatters in flash.
Hidden somewhere in this was true understanding. I know you better than you know yourself they seemed to say. You in all your madness and confusion. This was not a comforting feeling but it was right.
Why bring all this up? In part because it wouldn’t be this blog if I didn’t lament their shift in style at least once every six months or so. And partly to lament the sheer idiosyncrasy of this sound – it’s not that others try and fail to replicate it. It’s that despite a general recognition of the genius of a Lonesome Crowded West, there are few bands out there who would even dare to try and work with these sonic textures.
And this thought is brought on by listening to Pet Ghost Project, the project of one guy: Justin Stivers, who clearly draws a great deal of inspiration from this sound. In particular, on his new record Cheer Up It’s Raining. It’s not a carbon copy by any means, but that quintessential sound, so hard to replicate, there are hints of it on this record, more than enough to entice the imagination.
You can hear it in “Celebrate Youth (over and over again)” with its loud and soft dynamics, with the staccato progression of notes that drive its final third. You can hear it in the slightly disconcerting sawing guitar interruption of the steady bass line in “Age of Automatics.” You can hear it in the scissoring riffs that close out “Tales of Stage Fright.” And so on.
None of this is to say that Pet Ghost Project is simply aping Modest Mouse. There’s a lot more going on here, including horns far more reminiscent of a Neutral Milk Hotel, a noise-core dynamic that produces songs with far more of a “wash” feel than you’d ever get from the Issaquah boys, and far more generous acoustic elements. There’s nothing at all about the acoustic dirge like “Violent Dreams” to remind you of Modest Mouse. Probably the finest song: “Producing Emotions” owes far more to Brian Wilson than Isaac Brock. Not to mention that Stivers has a far more traditionally pleasant voice, which results in a lot less snarling and a lot more melody.
A more objective review would probably draw far more from a variety of other bands to explain the rich array of sounds going on here. But for me, the experience of someone even dabbling in the same realm as those early Modest Mouse records is enough to frame the entire picture for me. That same DIY guitar impulse…it’s enough to get my heart racing just a little bit more, and that’s all you can really ask for, right?
Producing Emotions – Pet Ghost Project
Celebrate Youth (over and over again) – Pet Ghost Project