Modest Mouse will drop their first new album in eight years next week, Strangers To Ourselves their sixth studio record despite twenty long years together. The album follows their last effort in 2007, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, the upcoming release being called ‘eccentric and thoroughly excellent’ by hmv.com who sat down with Isaac Brock to discuss the new albums- a partner album to Stranger To Ourselves already nearly done, with Brock having set his mind to writing and releasing two together.
Asked when work on the new music begun, Brock recalls the band gathering at his house perhaps five years ago, the different setting keeping unnecessary persons from the room- “Last time there were six people in the room when we were writing and there were just too many moving parts, I’d end up taking stuff out and reorganizing, and it was too much.
“[For this album] we’d spend weeks at my house writing and I didn’t want to start with the idea that we were writing a record, I just wanted to play and see what happens.
“We did that forever and, after a while, I realized we were just jamming- the last thing the world needs is another jam band, so I thought ‘maybe we should actually write songs for a record.'”
Brock says the writing process itself wasn’t long, it was ‘everything else,’ set back by building their own studio and Eric Judy, formerly their bass player, deciding to leave the band for more time with his family; “We took three years recording the thing…. I just spent time doing parts over and over again, getting different people in, trying lots of shut, most of which didn’t work.”
With such setbacks and long years working, the album turned out produced by Brock himself- “the record took so long to do that I couldn’t make anyone give up that much time, they’d always have other shit to do, so I ended up basically doing the role by default. I accidentally produced it, we were a long way into recording before I realized I was producing it.”
Asked whether the next album following this pair (which he hopes to release as close to one another as ‘it’s legally allowed to be’ ) will be self-produced again, Brock is uncertain, not having found it any more helpful than having a producer. He only knows the wait will not be eight years again.
Read more on the great interview HERE.
