Modest Mouse floats on OK

I spent Wednesday night walking around the smoking section of the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver and doing interviews as I waited for Modest Mouse to take stage. After speaking with nine people I was surprised to hear that not one person had seen the headlining band live before.

“Tonight, I’m getting my Modest Mouse cherry popped,” said Erin Laudner, 20.

Indie-rock veterans Modest Mouse took the stage to the roar of air raid sirens. The set list began with “Satellite Skin,” one of the hit songs fresh off their new EP, Nobody’s First and You’re Next, released in early August. Front-man Isaac Brock wailed on his guitar, followed closely by ex-Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr.

“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going to pass out,” Brock said to the audience, referring to the altitude.

The band’s initial energy came and went throughout the rest of the show, due in large part to an awkward set list which grouped an interesting variety of songs together.

Melodic mainstream hit “Float On” had the entire crowd bobbing until Brock broke out the obscure, rant-y song “Shit Luck,” leaving the majority of the audience abandoned. The set list spanned early popular songs such as “Dramamine” and “Gravity Rides Everything,” to the often missed, such as “The View.”

The Modest Mouse show drew crowds from all across the social board. There were collar-popping jocks, tie-dye-clad hippies, punks, Goths, metal heads, hipsters, nerds and even a couple of grandparents, proof that it takes one mainstream hit to infiltrate all music lovers. The audience for the most part stayed pretty relaxed with the exception of a failed mosh-pit as begun by individuals unrehearsed in proper indie-rock etiquette.

Denver was just one of the stops on Modest Mouse’s five-month tour, which began in Canada and ends in the United Kingdom. The tour features a three-day stop in Portland, some café gigs and a show in Honolulu, making it clear that Modest Mouse is no longer just a sensation in the Indie-rock scene.

After almost 10 minutes of waiting for an encore, Issac Brock and his band returned on stage to blow away the patient listeners with a guitar-heavy rendition of “Fire it Up.” Two songs later, an exhausted Modest Mouse and even more exhausted fans departed from the auditorium entirely content.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Chris Atkinson at Chris.Atkinson@colorado.edu.