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Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock has been doing an uncharacteristic amount of interviews lately promoting The Golden Casket, his band’s first album in six years. Some have been borderline troubling. Others—namely, the ones that avoid getting into deep-cut conspiracy theories—manage to be pretty fun, in that genially cantankerous Isaac Brock way.
Vulture’s conversation with the Portland-based indie rock icon falls into the latter category.
Smartly eschewing questions about UFOs and gang-stalking, the article keeps the focus on the songs, and Brock’s relationship to them: What’s the new song you’re most excited to play live? (”Never Fuck a Spider on the Fly”...er, “Wooden Soliders.”) What song do you regret releasing? (”Well, I mean, not really [any]. It was the right thing at the right time.”) What’s the worst show you ever played? (”We were playing some parking lot in Kansas City, to I think around 10,000 people...And I got shit-faced in a way that I don’t like being.”)
The best answer, though, came in response to a query about the weirdest place Brock ever heard “Float On,” Modest Mouse’s biggest and most inescapable song. It was at Moda Center, during a Blazers game—but as Brock explains, it wasn’t so much the place as the context:
Admittedly, it’d be a better story if he’d stood up and dropped the nae-nae to his own song, but the image of Brock, high out of his mind, his face covered in mustard and relish, is pretty great.
Read the full interview here.
The Golden Casket is out now. Modest Mouse plays two nights at Edgefield, Aug. 27-28.