Jesus Christ Was An Only Child — Modest Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQLgDbs-8AI

I've written before about Modest Mouse's dry, contemporary tone; mixing bitter redneck sentiments with highbrow content and literary criticism. Perhaps there is no line between high and low art; there is only art, and those with influences, be they one or the other. For any one crowd, the other parts of the song scream — this is not for me — and this is the desired effect, for all parties to feel like an outsider, observant and attentive, unable to immerse yourself in music for which there is no perfect audience. There is a violin solo in a song about Jesus Christ; scratching and whining in the background, lyrics about internet cash. It's phenomenal.

Guilty Cocker Spaniels — Modest Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igXIB2ArH8c

I was used to the tone and structure of a typical song at this point. Modest Mouse were verbose, redneck, literary and uncultured; clever and professional and yet so rusty and loose. But I was adjusted at this point, so I got to listen to these songs with open ears, listening for songwriting, dynamics; how they'd perform them, how I'd cover them; what they meant and what they did and if they matched; what was a choice and what was interpretation; how they wanted me to see it and how I really did. This song is clever; it has wordplay and nice swells and swoops of phrase; it has Isaac Brock's unusual exaggerated vocals; it's more melodic and yet somehow more full, more wall-of-sound than most; further from trucker rock and more into indie pop, but never twee. I like it a lot, and it was one of those new songs. The ones you listen to and you must share.

All Nite Diner — Modest Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVKiiU50Ag

Modest Mouse was before I knew the subtle, brutish charm of the Midwest; they're from Issaquah, Washington (as is Nate Query of The Decemberists!), but no matter how Pacific-Northwestern they identify as, I'll always relate them to the delightfully un-picturesque ideas of the great American prairies I kept in my head during high school. Something about their sound — the lo-fi, the chants and whispers and talking in the background; the bumping, repetitive basslines; the dynamics and the arrangement, and, most of all, the lyrics about driving and medication and gas stations and leaving and going to and from different small towns. The lyrics mention Triple X and 8-ball and how to avoid premature ejaculation and snaggleteeth, but it's not comedic or dramatic. It's matter-of-fact, like this just how things are and sound and continue to be in small towns in America. The backwards guitar riffs are functional and interesting, not show-offy. As with so much of small-town America, the devil is in the details.

Sleepwalkin' — Modest Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_PwXjCqqs

There's a lot to say about covers, usually because the songs themselves, by virtue of being important enough to have been recorded not once but twice, are generally... well, important somehow.

The original, Sleep Walk, was a guitar-based instrumental from the 50s, recorded by two Italian guys from Brooklyn that, somehow, made it into the popular consciousness: used in movies, covered upwards of thirty times, and generally recognizable, like a folk song — even if no one knows who recorded it. (Santo and Johnny Farina.)

But it made it big. Some part of the song resonates with the aesthetic mind. Maybe its chord structure, maybe its tempo, maybe its specific vintage timbre and tone. It doesn't matter.

But for a band like Modest Mouse — whose typical work is fed through (as Pitchfork puts it) "the umbilical of strip malls, religion, blues, prairies, automobiles, and dysfunction" — the song emerges unscathed. It's a little twangier, a little slower and sadder, and a little more electric. It has drums.

It also has lyrics. Written by Modest Mouse, fit to the music, and layered over. Not as a remix, or a theft. A tasteful reappropriation. Typically, I discovered this backwards. I heard the Modest Mouse version first, and then discovered (maybe by instinct) that it was a cover of an instrumental.

But by that time, the Modest Mouse version was canonized. The lyrics fit, made sense, cemented the song for me. Sleepwalkin' exists as a song about country life and white trash.

But it also exists as Sleep Walk, a song firmly set in 1959 Brooklyn, with Coney Island and Trinity Records, when a record (not a CD) would make gold and give the Farina brothers enough to live on for a lifetime.

What is it about that damn song?