Sun Kil Moon – Tiny Cities / Iron Horse – Pickin’ On Modest Mouse: A Bluegrass Tribute
Northwest indie-rockers Modest Mouse have been a target for both doe-eyed reverie and lip-curled hatred, but regardless of which camp you align with (I fall deeply into the former), it’s impossible to deny frontman Isaac Brock’s lyrical obsession with the afterlife, interstates and urbanization of the west. If critics have paid minimal attention to his uncanny poetics, a singer-songwriterly tribute from Sun Kil Moon and a bluegrass tribute from Iron Horse may provoke a closer look.
Sun Kil Moon’s acoustic plucks transform Brock’s cracked-out streams-of-consciousness into pensive midnight crooners, most of which fail to snare the working-class angst that’s made Modest Mouse such a high-tension act. “Neverending Math Equation” works as a country strummer on the strength of Mark Kozelek’s amber, Neil Young-like delivery of lyrics such as “I’m the same/as I was when I was six years old,” as does the road map finger-trace “Trucker’s Atlas”. But “Dramamine” sinks without the throat-scorched shouting of “We kiss on the mouth but still cough down our sleeves!”, and “Jesus Christ Was An Only Child” seems to miss the sarcastic commentary of “Working real hard to make internet cash/work your fingers to the bone sitting on your ass.”
Pickin’ On, meanwhile, leans toward being a collectible novelty. “Ocean Breathes Salty” transcends as a gospel-inflected number, and “Polar Opposites” was country-tinged from the word go, given its refrain: “I’m trying to drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away.” What’s sorely absent, however, is the cursing. Brock has a lovely way of phrasing “goddamn,” the lack of which makes “Trailer Trash” less effective as a pondering of social class divisions. Of course, as Steve Earle once snidely remarked, “There’s no room in vulgarity for bluegrass.”