Episode 38: Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West
In the last album of the season, the guy cover literally, one of the best albums of all time-- Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West. Released in 1997 on Up Records, the band met with producer, Calvin Johnson, at Moon Studios where for seventeen consecutive days they recorded, before holding a second, smaller session with Phil Elk in Seattle. During these recordings, the band refined the sonic landscape it debuted just one year prior with their first studio album—This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. And while that release was a breakthrough with the public eye, the band truly garnered a following with this album, as it would come to define modern indie rock. And the record, while not explicitly autobiographical, provides insight into the throughs and dwelling of Isaac Brock as he muses over malls, Montana, and modern religion.