May 24, 2021

Modest Mouse - "Leave A Light On"


Next month, Modest Mouse are set to release their first new album since 2015 and today they've shared the second lead single.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, Modest Mouse were a band that wonderfully captured the sound of indie rock. They weren't too heavy, but Isaac Brock's throat-wrenching scream hit with enough angst to counter the band's softer moments and their take on your meat-and-potatoes guitar, drum, and bass-driven rock gave them enough credo from record store clerks and burgeoning internet critics that by the time "Float On" hit the airwaves, it seemed like the band was set for stardom. Through subsequent follow-ups, they never really recaptured the moment from that song or reached those heights again, but their status as bona-fide rockers continued to reign supreme even as new music would come fewer and further between. They became a staple for festivals needing a solid rock act and toured regularly despite not having a ton of new music to play. Six years after the largely forgettable Strangers to Ourselves, Brock is back to his old ways and the first single hinted that the band still had some magic up their sleeves. "Leave A Light On" is a major fork-in-the-road, however ,in terms of their sound and for the first time in a long time, we find the band taking a risk to change things up and while they don't knock it out of the park, it's exciting to hear them willing to take risks and not fall flat. "Leave A Light On" is a decent song and certainly one worth hearing even as a casual listener. In fact, it could be their first song in quite some time to win over people who weren't already fans. 

The Golden Casket is out June 25.

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