Modest Mouse’s new album, “Strangers to Ourselves,” had been eight years coming, and it finally arrived March 16. With so many years since its last studio album, expectations were high.
Any band trying to make a comeback album after a hiatus has nothing short of a difficult task on their hands. Modest Mouse had to live up to its own reputation because of the hit songs that opened them up to a bigger audience like “Float On” and “Dashboard.”
Even with years of experience, every lyric, chord and note is getting judged critically.
The title, “Strangers to Ourselves,” is reflective of the artists. This album is unlike their previous ones. It is almost as if the artists detached from the usual creative spunk and developed an album full of songs challenging their youth and relevancy.
Every minuscule sound is fine-tuned and perfected to make heartwarming music. It is definitely an album for a multitude of occasions: a road trip soundtrack, workout pump-up or cool-down tunes and fitting background noise for studying.
This is the band’s sixth album, and, at this point, Modest Mouse seem to have exhausted all of the creative juices that used to flow with authenticity. The songs are drawn out but have great musical integrity. The instrumental additives are what make Modest Mouse such an amazing band.
In this album it has included instruments such as the violin and piano to match their rock-vibe. It is always pleasant to the ear to have a classical instrument intertwined with a different genre, and Modest Mouse did it well.
Since no one knows when Modest Mouse will release an album after this (if it even does), I would have preferred them to come back with a bang. Even with the prereleased song “Lampshades on Fire” doing well on Billboard charts, I don’t really see “Strangers to Ourselves” being a top album. But it should not be listened to lightly.
An iconic band making a decent album is still considered incredible music in my book.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 3/26/2015 under the headline “Review: Modest Mouse’s newest album doesn’t meet expectations”]
