Modest Mouse
Sad Sappy Sucker

THE REVIEW

"Sad Sappy Sucker" was supposed to be the first document in the later hyper-prolific career of Isaac Brock's Modest Mouse. It came to light only in 2001, after seven years of gestation, for Olympia's K Records, the first farsighted label to set eyes on the monumentally romantic and minimal compositions of the Issaquah, Washington DC combo, by releasing their first 7".

And it is precisely within that noble tradition of American post-Punk that Modest Mouse's first opus finds its place. Halfway between Pavement and Guided By Voices electrics, even before Built To Spill (another band, to be truthful, blessed by the 7"s of Calvin Johnson's label), with whom they share a certain poetic and melancholic vein, even within the most sparse episodes.

"Sad Sappy Sucker" is a naive and almost incomplete concentrate, a sublimation of disharmony among accords, a perfect snapshot of instability and lasciviousness, something between a bedroom collection and a basement session. A collection of short and wonderful melodic vignettes, guitar-driven Rock, where guitar-driven means structured without ever being over the top. On the contrary, it's below these lines, slackerness was once said, where gems like "Slanted & Enchanted" such as "Worms vs. Birds" or off-key Pollardian reminiscences like "Race Car Grin You Ain't No Landmark" are housed. The true merit of Modest Mouse was to know how to maximize the minimum, as if they wanted to paint autumn with just one tone, and manage to raise the register ("Every Penny Fed Cat", guitar outbursts worthy of the best Ira Kaplan of the Nineties) without ever losing their drowsiness. In this sense, projects like "Call To Dial-A-Song" should be understood, an obligatory yet sincere tribute to They Might Be Giants, where a recorder was activated with every phone call received, reproducing Isaac Brock's out, rustic, and homemade compositions, reminiscent here of Daniel Johnston's carefree charm.

From then on, Modest Mouse's career would be a linear crescendo, from minimalist and lo-fi approximations, traversing the decade with increasingly epic and dynamic constructs, reaching the notable collaborations of recent years and a maturation and settling into a third age, still capable of offering moments of intimacy and evocation. What has often been lacking, and instead is entirely dominant here, is the debut's personality and sincere subversiveness, indeed an album to be historically recataloged - also considering the tribulations due to the publication date - among the highest points of early Nineties American independent Rock.