Last Night, My Modest Mouse

The heat, oh the bastard heat - it threatened to derail what promised to be the best Monday work night of my life. Working in our favour was that my Twitter contest winnings had us on the guest list for this particular show, and thus we didn't have to wait in the line at the gates that looked to run some 2,000-deep, and snaked around the Forum parking lot like, I dunno, a big sweaty snake with frizzy hair and those earrings that guys wear that totally stretch out your earlobes... anyway, suckers! In mere seconds, Terri and I were in the old arena, sucking back $5.00 Molson Canadian draft (the only option), ogling the crowd, chatting nervously with acquaintances, and waiting anxiously for the show to start.

The Halifax Forum Multipurpose Room was full of hot air, dark-rimmed glasses, scruffy beards, a surprising number of old dudes (and their old ladies), and clingy, sweaty clothing as far as the eye could see; the place was literally dripping with humidity. No matter, as local post-rock heroes Tomcat Combat soon took to the tiny fraction of the stage not stacked with Modest Mouse gear and soundly impressed, regardless of the heat. I had been looking forward to seeing these guys for quite some time, and I like to think that if I had the time and ambition to start up a band that it would sound something like this... but with their crazy time signatures, and crack drumming, and massive pedal boards, probably not... sigh, back for another watery beer.

Soon after, Modest Mouse took the stage with two drummers, a couple of beards, lots of soon-to-be-soggy flannel, a banjo, a trumpet, and a fiddle. They promptly opened with Dramamine(!), whose duelling delay-drenched guitar and bass licks swirled around the big room, deafening, making me very happy. I swayed. I sang. I sweat. The remainder of the set list was heavy with newer tracks, with quite a few from We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, and all of the crowd favourites from Good News For People Who Love Bad News. As a live band, Modest Mouse are notoriously sloppy; Isaac Brock's vocal delivery is all over the map, sometimes mumbling as if he doesn't really care (see Float On), other times screaming like he was on fire. Plus at any given time, it seemed like any one of the band could have been playing in the completely wrong key - most notably Brock's "solo" at the end of the otherwise awesome World At Large - but given how long they've been doing this, I'd have to assume that this was intentional. These points (shortcomings?) were most obvious during their slow and mid-tempo songs, of which there were many; needless to say, the highlights of the show came when the band was completely rocking out, shredding extended feedback solos over stomping four-on-the-floor beats: see Doin' The Cockroach, The View, Parting Of The Sensory, and set-closing Spitting Venom before it devolved into an extended discordant noise jam that had Terri plugging her ears (lol).

In case this sounds negative, know that the highlights certainly outshone any complaints I might have had re: the song choices, or even the heat. I left happy and tired and soaked, with my ears ringing and my flip-flopped toes miraculously in tact (my wife and sister having mocked me out of wearing my sneakers + socks). And upon returning home, I chugged cold water directly from the tap until my teeth hurt...

EDIT: found...