Modest Mouse deals with death and breathes life into a new album that 'actually is ours'

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Isaac Brock doesn’t care to reminisce.As fans celebrate the arrival of Modest Mouse’s eighth studio album, “An Eraser and a Maze,” as well as the 30th anniversary of the band’s 1996 debut album, “This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About,” the mercurial frontman hits a mental wall when asked to consider what three-plus decades of Modest Mouse has meant to him.

“I don’t have an answer,” he admits with a sense of finality.“Sorry.”“I barely have a memory,” he jokes.

“That’s actually one of the things that my friends and family compliment me on, which is I don’t f—ing do a lot of looking back in that way.”Brock isn’t being rude — far from it.He’s just bracingly honest and notoriously wobbly when asked to verbalize the significance of everything and anything — from his poetically dense lyricism to the whole of his revered music career.Having just wrapped sound check before a show at the College Street Music Hall in New Haven, Conn., Brock is sitting behind the venue as the sun sets behind him, creating a kind of halo effect, which is fitting, since we spend much of our conversation talking about life and death.

Taking drags of cigarettes and sipping on a can of cider seems to clarify his thought process as he works to focus his answers.His speaking cadence mirrors his singing style, going in fits and starts, spilling out a series of thought fragments that somehow end up magically fitting together.Almost everything about Brock and Modest Mouse as an entity defies convention and embodies contradiction: lyrics can be sardonic and upbeat; Brock has toiled in the DIY trenches and shot to the top of the charts; Modest Mouse is among the era-defining indie-rock bands of the early aughts and, until recently, spent decades on a major label.“An Eraser and a Maze” marks the first Modest Mouse project released outside the ma...