Modest Mouse – The Golden Casket – Double Vinyl Record

Description

Modest Mouse – The Golden Casket – Double Vinyl Record

The Golden Casket finds Modest Mouse making room for both the world's unsettling noise and the more immediate changes of family life. Released in 2021 after a six-year gap between studio albums, the twelve-song record brings Isaac Brock's distinctive writing into arrangements built with producers Dave Sardy and Jacknife Lee. The sessions took place in Los Angeles and at the band's Portland studio. Guitars remain part of the sound, but percussion, electronic details, and unusual instrumental colors give the album other ways to express its mixture of curiosity, agitation, and occasional hope.

Brock has always been able to make a song feel as though several thoughts are competing for his attention. The Golden Casket uses that quality in a particularly detailed setting. Transmitting Receiving turns toward the signals and unseen systems that surround everyday life, while Fuck Your Acid Trip establishes a more abrasive opening perspective. The arrangements can be busy, but their details serve a record whose subjects include the effect of technology on how people experience the world. A repeated figure, a small percussive sound, or an electronic interruption can become part of the song's uneasy atmosphere.

There is also a brighter current running through the album. We Are Between and The Sun Hasn't Left give its melodic side a clear presence, making space for encouragement without requiring Brock to become an uncomplicated optimist. His voice keeps some friction inside even the more approachable songs. Jacknife Lee and Dave Sardy help the band build arrangements that can support those hooks while retaining unusual corners. The result is a Modest Mouse record with immediate points of entry and plenty of details that prevent the music from becoming too smooth or predictable.

Lace Your Shoes brings fatherhood into the picture, giving the album a more personal scale. That perspective sits beside songs concerned with larger pressures, making the record's questions about time and attention feel less abstract. Wooden Soldiers allows its ideas room to unfold, while Walking and Running and Never Fuck a Spider on the Fly bring other kinds of energy into the set. The shifts fit Brock's habit of moving between an intimate observation and a wider view of how people live. The music can follow him because the arrangements are willing to change their emphasis along the way.

Leave a Light On, Japanese Trees, and Back to the Middle carry the second disc toward the end of the program, with the closing song bringing guitar and a warmer melodic presence back into focus. The Golden Casket gives listeners a view of Modest Mouse exploring new production possibilities while keeping Brock's voice and writing at the center. Its twelve songs can be restless, inviting, or emotionally direct, sometimes within the same passage. The album's interest comes from hearing those states coexist: a band attentive to strange sounds, a writer aware of the noise around him, and room for moments when a personal connection can still cut through.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Release Details

Artist

Modest Mouse

Album

The Golden Casket

Format

Double Vinyl Record

Number of vinyl records

2

Original album release

2021

Label

Epic Records

Track Listing

Side A

Fuck Your Acid Trip

We Are Between

We're Lucky

Side B

Walking and Running

Wooden Soldiers

Transmitting Receiving

Side C

The Sun Hasn't Left

Lace Your Shoes

Never Fuck a Spider on the Fly

Side D

Leave a Light On

Japanese Trees

Back to the Middle