The groundbreaking indie-rock faves made their 20 Monroe Live debut for a sold-out crowd a memorable one, trotting out the unexpected and, eventually, their biggest hit. (Review, photo gallery)
Floating On: Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse brought a two-hour show to 20 Monroe Live on Sunday night. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
I was about to go home from Sunday night’s Modest Mouse show and think deeply about what it meant for a band in 2017 to play a sold-out concert and not do its biggest hit. (Answer: Nothing.)
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Tour Stop: Modest Mouse is touring behind its latest album, “Strangers to Ourselves.” (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
Luckily though, boom, second encore: There’s “Float On,” for probably the first time in Grand Rapids. The last time Modest Mouse performed in town, I believe, was a thousand lifetimes ago in 2002, at the old Intersection in Eastown, where, legend has it, frontman Isaac Brock stormed off the stage for unspecified reasons.
Back then, the group was a rising indie darling supporting the still-classic album “The Moon and Antarctica,” still a couple of years from hitting mainstream paydirt.
Unlike a lot of bands that this happened to in the early 2000s, the Washington-bred Modest Mouse was equipped with the catalog and chops to justify both its time in the spotlight and the career as an enduring festival act and mid-sized venue headliner it has maintained for the subsequent 15 or so years.
This musculature was on display from the moment Brock and his seven-member support crew took the stage at 20 Monroe Live on Sunday night to a sold-out crowd of more than 2,500. Modest Mouse’s nearly two-hour set contained — but also emitted — just enough material to remind concertgoers what a special event they were experiencing.
The Crowd: Sunday’s concert was sold out. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
Early quasi-hit “Gravity Rides Everything”?
Nope, but please enjoy a locked-in version of “Never Ending Math Equation,” the lead-off track to the early compilation “Building Something Out of Nothing.”
Fan favorites like “Night On the Sun,” “The Ocean Breathes Salty” or “Black Cadillacs”? No, but don’t worry, they’ve got jammed-out renditions of “Dashboard,” “This Devil’s Workday” and “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” — plus a hearty portion of 2015’s “Strangers To Ourselves,” Modest Mouse’s most recent album — to scratch all conceivable itches.
I’ve long since stopped being the kind of music fan who leaves a show disappointed if such and such a song doesn’t appear on a set list, but I might have been existentially troubled to have not heard “3rd Planet,” which appeared in the first encore and explains quantum physics and cosmology better than any pop song ever: “Well the universe is shaped exactly like the Earth — if you go straight long enough, you end up where you were.”
Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded, in life and in music, that you can sometimes hear just what you need, and then float right on.
PHOTO GALLERY: Modest Mouse, Mass Gothic at 20 Monroe Live
Photos by Anthony Norkus
