Dancing About Architecture: “A Pretty Good Read”
by Katie
I like books. In an effort to learn more and find new stuff to listen to, I’m going to read more books about music. Someone once said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” which I don’t completely agree with, but see the humor in. Hence the title of this new thing I’ll periodically be doing.
If I could, I would have called this feature “A Pretty Good Read,” like the lyric from the Modest Mouse song “Bukowski,” but unfortunately that is the title of the first book I’m reviewing, and I didn’t want it to seem like I was stealing Alan Goldsher’s thing.
Isaac Brock, singer, songwriter, and general troublemaker of the band Modest Mouse, is an interesting character. He’s media-shy, but when he grants interviews, he spills his guts. His life has either been incredibly difficult, or he’s hyperbolized it beyond plausibility. There is no question that Brock writes some of the weirdest and most compelling music I’ve ever heard. In this unauthorized biography, Goldsher attempts to tease out some version of Brock’s and the band’s history.
It’s not atypical–rural kid listens to the Pixies, starts a band with friends–but it’s not pretty either. Substance abuse plagues the band. There are arrests, mental breakdowns, accusations of rape–and all of these before their mainstream breakthrough album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News.
The good news is, as they grew up, the members of Modest Mouse toned down the substance abuse without compromising their artistic vision. Yes, yes, I know The Moon & Antarctica is supposedly their finest work, but really? Those jangly goddamn guitars on “Float On” are too perfect to exist. Good News is sad, hopeful, angry, peaceful, funny, macabre, quiet, loud, understated, overstated–it’s an exercise in contradictions that… well, this isn’t a review for a six-year-old album. But I’m kicking myself for missing that one on my favorites of the decade.
Goldsher tells Brock’s story as best he can without direct access to anyone actually in the band, but unfortunately this approach reads a bit like an E! True Hollywood Story from time to time. He often interjects asides about his own experience as a bassist and music journalist, for some reason, and he reviews each track of each album in meticulous detail. I’m not sure if that’s standard for rock biographies, but it was much dryer than the other parts. Then again, when your subject unexpectedly gets his face beat in one night in Chicago, nothing else really holds up.
Also, I’m sending this book up to the true Modest Mouse fan of the fam, Mikey.
