Modest Mouse - An Eraser And A Maze

Thirty years into one of indie rock's most restless and rewarding careers, Modest Mouse have returned with their eighth studio album, and it is a record that carries real weight. Released on Isaac Brock's own Glacial Pace Recordings, marking the band's first independent release in over two decades, An Eraser And A Maze is the first album since the passing of co-founding drummer Jeremiah Green in 2022, and his absence is woven quietly but unmistakably through the fabric of the record.

A physics theory holds that past, present, and future coexist simultaneously, and that is the best lens for an album that feels like every era of Modest Mouse happening at once. Produced by Brock alongside Jacknife Lee, Suzy Shinn, and Justin Raisen, and featuring Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney on drums, the album stretches across the band's full sonic history, from propulsive, hook-heavy openers like "Picking Dragon's Pockets" to raw, plaintive moments that refuse easy optimism. On "Third Side of the Moon," Brock sings "I wish I'd listened to every word you'd ever said," the familiar grief of time passing and memory fading. On "Look How Far," an upbeat rhythm almost eclipses the despair beneath it. That duality, lugubrious and buoyant, warm and cold, familiar and alien, is what Modest Mouse have always done better than almost anyone.

"For this one, I turned off my filter and just let it all happen," Brock has said. The result is an album centered on progress and self-sabotage, mortality and meaning, the ambivalence of the world balanced against the connections that make it worth it.

Pressed on limited edition Ocean Floor vinyl, 180g EcoSonic audiophile double LP in gatefold jacket with printed sleeves and lyric sheet.