The Music Man: Modest Mouse turns the Liberty Hall stage into a musical experiment

Justin Curto, Mill Valley News editor-in-chief
September 2, 2015

Modest_Mouse_4
By Justin Curto
Eyes closed, Modest Mouse lead vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Isaac Brock belts a note as he strums his guitar at Liberty Hall in Lawrence on Tuesday, Sept. 1. Modest Mouse performed in Lawrence for the first time in 15 years on its "Strangers to Ourselves" tour, and played songs spanning the band's 23-year career.

Toward the right of a stage stands a vocalist playing banjo, with a guitar pick taped to his head and the crazed look of a mad musical scientist on his face. His assistants fill in the rest of the stage — one plays violin and keyboards and sings; one plays keyboards, trumpet and upright bass; two wield various guitars; two play on side-by-side drum sets and one sits in the corner, shaking and hitting nearly-every instrument known to man. At Liberty Hall in Lawrence on Tuesday, Sept. 1, I watched and listened to this experiment in alternative music unfold, mesmerized as lead vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Isaac Brock and the rest of Modest Mouse turned the stage into a musical laboratory.

Modest Mouse came to Lawrence as part of the “Strangers to Ourselves” tour, supporting its first new album in eight years. While the band played the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Missouri just last year, its last show in Lawrence was 15 years ago at The Granada. The band doubled its size and its discography since that last show — a testament to its sonic evolution and journey to the top of alternative music. I had few expectations when I walked into Liberty Hall to see Modest Mouse’s sold-out show, but I left with a guarantee that the band would’ve exceeded nearly every expectation I could have had.

Morning Teleportation opened Tuesday’s show, and its performance could not have been a more pleasant surprise. The psychedelic rock band from Bowling Green, Kentucky, has only released one album thus far, but played like seasoned veterans. After walking onstage, lead vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Tiger Merritt got right to business, starting on the guitar riff of “Wholehearted Drifting Sense of Inertia.” The nine-minute rock epic set the perfect tone for the rest of Morning Teleportation’s opening set — one of the most energetic and professional opening performances I’ve ever seen.

The band played with enormous passion in a 45-minute set that made Morning Teleportation feel like a second headlining band. Merritt put all his effort into playing complicated guitar riffs and energetically singing, not caring as his hair fell onto his face. Keyboardist Travis Goodwin’s intensity complemented Merritt’s nicely as he danced from behind his keyboard and banged on the keys — and it was quite a spectacle when Merritt started playing on the keyboard facing Goodwin’s in a dueling fashion. The band’s lights and smoke added to its psychedelic feel nicely, and by the end of its set, I could tell some of the Modest Mouse fans in the crowd wanted more of Morning Teleportation.

The intermission between Modest Mouse and Morning Teleportation was an excessive 45 minutes, but I immediately forgave it when Modest Mouse took the stage. Under Brock’s direction, the band began playing in 1992, but it went through many lineup changes. The only other original member on the stage that night was drummer Jeremiah Green, but the band’s original spirit still filled Liberty Hall. Modest Mouse opened the show with a standout performance of “Missed The Boat,” a mid-tempo number from its No. 1 album “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.” From that performance alone, I could tell the crowd was full of die-hard Modest Mouse fans — many audience members sang along to every word, and the applause afterward was the loudest thing I’d ever heard one song into a band’s set. This enthusiasm continued for the rest of the night, with Modest Mouse feeding off the crowd to create a phenomenal 1 hour, 45 minute set.

At the center of the band’s interaction with the audience, Brock bridged the gap between the stage and the floor like no other. His awkward sense of humor came through from the beginning, when he asked the crowd if it would prefer small talk, banter or “small talk disguised as banter.” He kept the mood up throughout the night, whether through telling audience members about his on-stage fan as they sweated in the packed theater or instructing them to “tell each other jokes” as a crew member switched out an amp (one of the more cumbersome moments of the night, but I guess it means Modest Mouse rocked hard). Tuesday night’s setlist was amazingly crafted. Modest Mouse doesn’t have a firm setlist on the “Strangers to Ourselves” tour — a great move for the band whose catalog spans six studio albums, six extended plays and two compilation albums. For the band’s Lawrence show, it made sure to play new music off “Strangers to Ourselves,” popular past hits, deep cuts from the ‘90s and everything in between. The band impressed with its live performances off “Strangers to Ourselves,” an album which received mixed reviews earlier this year. “Lampshades On Fire,” the album’s lead single, was a fun and energetic number, and included a great guitar breakdown at the end. The band’s performance of the album’s closing track, “Of Course We Know,” was straight-up epic, and proved to be one of the most impassioned vocal performances Brock, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Lisa Molinaro and guitarist/vocalist Jim Fairchild gave all night. And, the radio version of “The Ground Walks, With Time In a Box” couldn’t hold a candle to the song’s awesome six-minute live rendition. No performance benefited more from Molinaro’s addition to the band than “Dashboard,” arguably one of the band’s most popular songs. Molinaro’s violin-playing ability gave the song depth, and hearing female backing vocals against Brock’s rougher voice was a nice change. Molinaro wasn’t the only one to bring out a quirky stringed instrument, though — Brock, her boyfriend of five years, picked a banjo on “King Rat” and “Bukowski,” the former of which also included some really raw-sounding (in a good way) vocals from Brock. The second half of the concert was especially strong, accented by a rare performance of “Talking S— About a Pretty Sunset,” one of my favorites by the band. That song, along with “Satellite Skin” and main set-closer “The View,” gave the band’s performance an almost-spiritual feel between transcendent guitar riffs and beautiful vocals. And, of course, no Modest Mouse set would have been complete without “Float On,” the centerpiece of the band’s Grammy-nominated album “Good News For People Who Love Bad News,” which elicited the loudest and best singalong of the night in a performance that would’ve satisfied bandwagon and diehard fans alike. No one in the audience moved after Brock and company left the stage at the end of “The View,” instead cheering for a full five minutes before the band took the stage. The focal point of Modest Mouse’s encore was an epic 8 ½-minute performance of “Night On The Sun” — another rarely-performed song that impressed me with Brock’s signature vocals and its beautiful, soft guitars that built into an impassioned crescendo of sound. The band ended the night with a lighter performance of “The Good Times Are Killing Me,” which left me more than satisfied.

After this Modest Mouse show, I know I’ll have come back the next time the band comes to Kansas City or Lawrence. I know for sure that the mad musical scientist Isaac Brock has plenty more up his sleeve, and I can’t wait to see what.

Senior Justin Curto is an avid music lover whose tastes range from alternative rock to dance pop. He enjoys supporting the Kansas City music scene by listening longer to 96.5 The Buzz, rocking out to local music and seeing artists live at his favorite venues in the area.

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