New time follower. Wonderful seeing someone actually reviewing Modest Mouse. There is one song that is so powerful yet little on the lyrics and that The Whale Song Very haunting and the official video is great. Keep up the great work
The video for this track is so good. You should check that out too. Also, Johnny Marr’s guitar work is so easily identifiable - sticks out like a sore thumb
Yeah I always took the first part of the song as a depiction of toxic optimism, completely disallowing yourself to see any negativity, and later in the song, realizing that doing so prevented you from doing the right things to "right the ship", as it can get to a point where it's too late to fix everything with a few simple actions - corrective measures would have required lots of little tiny things being done previously to make one small thing right later (even needs have needs, tiny giants made of tinier giants - that is, things that seem like a small thing on the outside can actually be a really big deal). If you didn't know, this album was originally conceptualized a concept album about the members of the crew of a ship meeting their demise throughout the course of the album, so even though it shifted from that, the album overall has a strong feeling of "things going wrong and you can't fix it" And yeah, Johnny Marr was in Modest Mouse for a little while during this era, he's talked about working with them again soon.
Piggybacking off of this because you worded the mood of the song better than I could, and I think you’re right, but more specifically, I always thought that this song was about climate change, and the general public’s (and most governments’) apathetic opinion of it. “If the world don’t like us, it’ll shake us just like we were a cold” is the line that made me consider this. And everything else can be seen as that toxic optimism; “eh the world’s fucked, but at least it’s warm out. Everything’s fine, really.” And the “needs have needs/tiny giants” bit is in relation to the course correction that would have been needed to fix the problems. That’s always been my interpretation, but it really could just be a relationship thing, or a wider statement on the human condition, as the website said.
The Moon and Antarctica helped me with my gramma passing 🙃 I listened to Gravity Rides Everything over n over n over and it calmed me soso much! Much love for your lost grandpappy ❤ sincerely!
Modest Mouse has so many amazing songs. My rec’s would be “Broke” from Building Something Out of Nothing and “The Stars are Projectors” from The Moon & Antarctica.
![Modest Mouse - Dashboard [REACTION]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
