Interview: Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock talks Daydream, Spotify and frogs
Ahead of their performance at Daydream Sydney, Modest Mouse songwriter, lead singer and guitarist Isaac Brock spoke to Something You Said’s Joseph Agius:
How are you going?
I’m doing all right, man. Doing good.
That’s great! Jumping right into it – what have been the best and worst parts about Daydream and touring Australia?
I mean, there haven’t been any – well, I guess the worst part for me was falling off the stage the first night.
Yeah, I heard about that!
Because there was a gap between the amp and the stage, and I was reaching over to get something someone was handing me, and because the way the lights were, you couldn’t even see the floor there. There was just an Isaac-sized hole, and I just fell right into it. I thought I broke my wrist, but I tended to it well, and – but, no, you know?
Just like Dave Grohl in that one concert.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you fall. But, no, I mean, I wouldn’t say there’s really, except for that, been any worse. We’ve only played one of the Daydream festivals so far, and I mean, for me, a highlight to any day would be seeing Tropical Fuck Storm, of course.
Of course, yeah. They’re awesome.
Yeah. Watching them, you know, it’s hard to look away from. It’s pretty amazing. They’re just amazing.
You’ve toured here heaps, right?
Yeah. You know, we’ve toured here a little. I wouldn’t say we’ve toured here heaps and we haven’t been here since 2016, which is a long fucking time.
We always intend to get down here sooner, but somehow a lot of shit happens, ie, when there was two years of Covid, you know, such his life. We’re here now and this is one of my favorite parts of the world. And I’m not even glad-handing you, It’s actually true. I just fucking love it down here. This is the first time I’ve been here when it’s been changing into fall and it had never occurred to me that you guys had cold weather here. I was like, ‘it’s always nice’. Yeah.
Yeah, I know, right? It’s like a little corner of California kind of until it’s not. Something I find really cool about Modest Mouse is its longevity. You’ve been going for almost 30 years, have there been any consistent motivators for creating music?
I’m not sure how to answer that question. Like, that’s a bunch of things. But I guess the bottom line is I just really like doing it. And then at some point it, I don’t know… occasionally I’m like, ‘Maybe I should go to school and learn how to do this or that and try something different’.
But I still am having a lot of fun and it takes up enough time that I don’t need a backup plan yet. But It’s tricky keeping a band going this long. I mean, just keeping it interesting for ourselves and things. And you know, one of the ways you do that is by kind of cycling new people in. And the problem there is that sometimes people have to get cycled out. And there’s a moment where I was like, ‘I don’t want to get rid of anyone, but I want to add this to it’ or ‘I want to have a new member.’
We had eight or nine people on stage and I was like, OK, I gotta make some tough choices. But, you know, just working with new people always keeps it fresh, too.
That’s cool.
Yeah. And if that doesn’t work, picking up an instrument that I don’t understand, it keeps it interesting too.
And just about the industry, obviously you’ve had so much time and experience. Is there anything you change about it?
I’m a musician, so I’d change how much those Spotify people pay us. They’re criminal, you know, like they really pulled a fast one. But as far as what I can personally do and what would I change about it? I mean, I don’t have an answer for this. I really don’t. No. I’m in the trenches and always in the trenches.
Maybe it was a bad question then. But that was another question just about Spotify and how the whole wave has influenced you as a musician, and influenced you just as someone trying to make a living?
I mean, it hasn’t influenced me as a musician at fucking all. I never go into writing music or performing music or anything that I do actually creatively and think, ‘How does this look with Spotify?’ You know? But I think that it’s shaped… just the concept of algorithms in general no matter what, you know, system it is.
I feel like that’s sort of a little dangerous, because a computer decides that you’re into this type of music, and this is ‘that’ type of music and you’re just going to end up painted deeper and deeper into this corner where you’re not exposed to stuff except for what you already have been decided to like.
And I think it can create limits on the variety of things that people listen to and, you know, let’s say that mainly what you listen to is Taylor Swift or Beyonce or something like that. But you might really fucking like AC/DC, but the algorithms are never going to feed you that because they’re not tied together.
People might be a little more varied in their taste than they’re aware of. So, I don’t know, I think it’s kind of dangerous like that. And from the point the algorithm starts, whatever was the most popular thing is always going to somehow manage to be the more popular thing, like a hundred other bands can put out fucking better records in a similar genre as someone else, but since they aren’t the first thing, aren’t already high on the algorithm, they’re not going to show up, and it makes it harder for other bands to start. That’s a long-winded fucking answer for you.
I completely understand, I know what you mean. About these new bands you’re set to play with, Tropical Fuck Storm and Majak Door, do you think we’re in safe hands in terms of the future of music, rock – at least from what you’ve seen?
I have no idea. I mean, I don’t know… People will always be creating something new, and it doesn’t matter if I fucking like it or not, if it’s resonating with people, then it’s good, you know?
Do you think there have been any artists that stick out to you as big influences, big markers growing up, creating your own music?
There are too many to list. I was a rabid consumer of music. I was always looking and always looking for something that I hadn’t heard that really spoke to me. And sometimes it did. And sometimes it would be all I’d listen to for fuckin three months, and then never to hear it, or listen to it again. Oftentimes when I’m listing my influences, I just lean on the same five bands I’ve always said, and then I forget it’s like, ‘Oh, actually, no, I listen to the Butthole Surfers a fucking lot, or They Might Be Giants’, like there’s all this stuff that I forget that truly formed my approach to music that, well, because it hasn’t been echoed back to me.
I mean, it’s easy for me to say The Pixies or Talking Heads, and shit, because plenty of people have pointed out that those are my influences. But honestly, like, there’s so many bands that people haven’t even heard of. Circus Lupus, huge influence. Have you heard of them?
I have, actually, yeah, yeah.
Good huh? But it’s crazy shit, so it’s all sorts of good stuff.
I’m very much the same way, I think, massively consuming. I know exactly what you mean. Like listing any, not just favorites, but what you think would be the most important to you is impossible.
I mean, there’s a band called Candy Machine that had one 7-inch record I listened to til the grooves wore off it. I would say that I was heavily influenced by that, but I couldn’t listen to any of their other records. Like I tried, and it just didn’t fucking… it didn’t work for me. I was, like, really influenced by just this one moment in a band’s career, you know, and the rest of it didn’t work for me.
Sometimes it just clicks, yeah. What about, this is something interesting – writing with Johnny Marr last year. What’s that process been like? He’s obviously legendary.
We’ve worked on one song together recently, and we haven’t really been writing since about 2017. When we did write, it was surprising. I mean, we started out, we were just going to write a couple of songs together and actually we just clicked so fucking well.
When we were both playing at the same time, songs just fell out. We couldn’t make enough songs. So it was one of those rare interactions because you can like, I’ve tried to play with some very talented people and had a really difficult time coming up with a single song that I felt good about. And sometimes you lock in. Johnny and I locked in really, really well.
It was fun, it was intense, we were both very focused. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t afraid to lose focus at the same time, and to just have fun, the whole band. And that period of writing was really fun, there were a lot of people in the band, but most of us would just be shooting the shit.
Someone would be playing around with an instrument and then they’d start playing something interesting, and someone else would walk over and it would kind of gradually build, and then people would walk away. It was like, let’s say if we were playing together for 10 hours in a day and whatnot, 8 hours of that, we were actually playing. But not everyone at the same time, it was just kind of like a buffet, you know, walking in and out.
That sounds really organic in how it all came together.
Yeah, yeah. It was. It was cool. Cool.
What are some of your goals that you have for your future coming up, music or otherwise?
It’s a fair question, but – and I’m sure I’ve got an answer – but I can’t. It’s not in focus for me right this second.
I know what you mean, just living in the moment
And it’s honestly, it’s the kind of answer – there’s certain things that if I’m on tour, my head’s just not in that space. If I’m at home, then all of a sudden I’m like, I’m thinking about goals. My goal today, is to play a show, and not fall off the stage.
Is there anything new you’re working on that you might want to tease, you might wanna talk about?
Nope! I mean, yes, I’ve been working on – I’m about eight songs into a record, and one of them is almost exclusively frogs. I have field recordings of frogs.
Field recordings of frogs.
Yeah, I recorded it at 192-bit depth and then keep transposing it down to different – you know, 88, 96 – and so it slows down the sound of the frog. But I recorded it with this mic that’s so nice, you never lose any frog sound, and I’ve just been moving those around and making a really pretty frog song.
Get that nice frog tone.
Yeah. I have a place in Hawaii and there’s a billion frogs and some just chirp, some of them sound like someone revving a motorcycle and so on, it’s fucking wild. Oh, and they eat each other. I just, that’s all they do to each other. The life of a baby frog is terrifying, and everything wants to eat you. Every fucking thing wants to eat you. Pigs want to eat you – fucking other frogs, your mother, like…
That is definitely an insight. That’s amazing. So, is that what you’re kind of leaning into, a more experimental side of things or just doing what you think would be cool and what’s fun?
It’s not even that. it doesn’t sound experimental, it sounds like pretty music, but, you know, I guess it’s an experiment for me. I did have a Tuvan throat singer to sing on it, too. This guy, he drives cabs in Portland, Enrique – he was on our last record, but he’s pretty buried in the mix. But he was like the world champion Tuvan throat singer, he won a horse once in Tuva! Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff going on.
Just one more question. If this upcoming show at the Hordern was your last concert, what would you do differently? How would you put on the show?
If it was the last one? I’d bring out all the instruments, and I’d want to do it with the people that aren’t around anymore, there would be so many people on stage.
Absolutely.
It would have to be a really long show and there would be a lot of people on and off stage and whatnot.
Long show, on and off all the old members, all the instruments, all the everything.
Yeah, yeah. If it were the last show, I’d make sure that everyone who’d been involved on the records and the recordings got to be part of it, you know?
It’s been great chatting – what’s next for you?
I’m largely on tour until fucking December with some gaps, couple of weeks here, a few weeks there. And during that time, I’m going to garden and hang out with my kids and try and figure out how to operate an excavator, because I can’t find anyone to properly excavate.
So, excavation?
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a pig problem on my property, and I need to build a fence but I need to excavate the land to get there. So anyways.
All right!
Fun Stuff.
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Interview by Joseph Agius.
