Forgotten Favorites: Building Nothing Out of Something

Some albums are just too good to let slip away beneath the sands of time, so each week Bill Melville pulls one out, dusts it off and offers it up for your renewed consideration ...

While they made some pop concessions this decade, the framework for Modest Mouse has barely changed since the band's inception. Their debut, This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About, proceeds in direct succession to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.

This isn't to say the band hasn't changed; if anything, it has been true to its musical vision. This vision comes out just as clear in the band's non-album tracks, a fact that allowed the band to assemble those tracks into one solid long-player. 

Nothing Out of Something bucks the trend of the non-album collection, sequencing songs from an EP, some Sub Pop Singles Club efforts and other tracks in an organic manner. Without the diagram in the liner notes illustrating where Modest Mouse originally released them, it would be impossible to tell these tracks weren't recorded together.

It's fitting that the album opener, Never Ending Math Equation, is a meandering piece. Interstate 8 crafts a lazy travelogue through frontman Isaac Brock's ambient guitar work; even his abrasive chorus cannot disrupt this ride. The band switches it up on Broke, with simple, punchy guitar chords. Minimalism threatens to sabotage Medication before it breaks into different song two minutes in, thanks to a swirling organ on top of a standard Modest Mouse beat.

The tempo grows some muscle on A Life of Arctic Sounds, with jagged guitars and off-kilter bass splintered by Brock's slow-burning growl.

The band's black humor shines on Workin' On Leavin' The Livin' and its shimmering, almost psychedelic edge. A simple, chiming coda caps off the nearly 7-minute-long song, which subtly avoids getting bogged down by pacing.

The album concludes with two longer tracks, Whenever I Breathe Loud and Other People's Lives. As with many Mouse songs, they are loose musically and sad lyrically, although Other People's Lives starts with a funkiness Mouse wouldn't explore more deeply until recent albums. Then it turns to another frequent tone just below the surface in their songs - menace. It emerges evenly, through gritted teeth, until Brock finally unleashes it in little bursts. For as insular as their songs often appear, the closer is definitely a more epic song, although done on Modest Mouse's terms.

Sleepwalkin' is a clever tribute to Santo and Johnny's 1959 #1 instrumental Sleep Walk. Brock spruces up the classic melody with some tender, introspective lyrics. They're not the first act to add lyrics to Sleep Walk, but the ones Brock chose put Modest Mouse's stamp on this song.

A few songs fail to hit the mark, like Late Nite Diner and Baby Blue Sedan, but that's true of any Modest Mouse record. The rest of Building Nothing Out of Something reveals a young band whose non-album tunes deserve the same respect as their full-lengths.

Got memories of your own from this hidden gem? Share them in the comments section below ...