Of course Modest Mouse wound up playing London amid an unprecedented 40°C heat wave thatâs been declared a national emergency. They are, after all, a band prone to mishaps and misfortune: when this writer last saw them for NME theyâd mislaid their instruments en route to the gig, meaning half of their members spent an excruciating set grinding through their cult hits on as much gear as they could borrow. They even have a song called âShit Luckâ.
Tonight, though, the Pacific Northwest six-piece are radically on form. Not renowned for their live prowess, they rise to the improbability of the occasion. âFuck Your Acid Tripâ is more of an industrial-psych freak-out than the campfire dittie that appeared on their recent album âThe Golden Casketâ, while laconic drummer Jeremiah Green gets a workout â in this heat! â during a toothsome âKing Ratâ. And letâs not talk about the fact that guitarist Simon OâConnor is wearing a hoodie.
Frontman Isaac Brock, himself donning the kind of boiler suit heâs made part of his eccentric dad persona lately, tends to mix up set lists from one show to the next, but rolling from the anthemic optimism of âFloat Onâ to the grimy dancefloor spasm of âDoinâ The Cockroachâ has proven a winning tactic he wisely repeats here. The former goes off, a testament to the groupâs seemingly increased comfort in pleasing crowds (even if the singer quips afterwards: âI donât normally like explaining songs, but that one is about⊠floating onâ).
While the early Modest Mouse records sounded like someone had taken a cheese grater to them, the bandâs more recent work is imbued with a hip-hop sheen. Last year, Brock told NME that his increasing perfectionism had led him to try and combine the two: âI actually tried remixing all those [early] records from the ground up â six to nine times⊠It was bad⊠So I just flushed it. I thought, âThis is stupid â no-one wants to hear their old punk records [in hi-definition].’â Itâs curious, then, that as the group’s studio releases have become ever-more pristine, their live shows have often remained as fabulously disastrous as ever.
Perhaps, though, after 25 years as one of the most mercurial indie bands on the planet, the most interesting and unexpected thing they could do now is play a truly great gig. The frontman makes only one reference to the freaky weather, glugging from a bottle and muttering, âSome motherfucker has found a way to make water that makes me thirstier⊠How did they do that?â The world is a weird place, as Brock well knows, and itâs thankfully a little weirder â and more unpredictable â for having Modest Mouse in it.

Modest Mouse played:
â3rd Planetâ
âFuck Your Acid Tripâ
âFire It Upâ
âDramamineâ (with âLife Like Weedsâ outro)
âWe Are Betweenâ
âWe’re Luckyâ
âDance Hallâ
âDashboardâ
âTiny Cities Made of Ashesâ
âWooden Soldiersâ
âBukowskiâ
âKing Ratâ
âBrokeâ
âFloat Onâ
âDoin’ the Cockroachâ
âBack to the Middleâ
âLeave a Light Onâ
âTeeth Like God’s Shoeshineâ
âJapanese Treesâ
âLampshades on Fireâ
âSpitting Venomâ
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