Isaac Brock is not quite sure how he feels today. “I’ve not decided. Shit,” he says. “I think I’m feeling good, but I think that might be because I don’t have my hangover yet. I think that eventually I’ll be thinking that I should change my evil ways.”
Brock is undertaking a smattering of interviews in support of Modest Mouse’s new album, and they’re all running over time. It is not difficult to see why. Brock is no ordinary songwriter and that goes for his media persona, too.
The Montana-born musician is prone to going off on existential tangents, starting thoughts without finishing them, asking for a minute to think about certain questions and then peppering his answers with amusingly salty language.
If you resign yourself to not getting a straightforward answer, it’s a lot of fun. One minute you’re discussing gigs, the next he’s recounting a trip to the Cliffs of Moher that he took with his mother.
“Around Doolin. There’s cliffs and shit,” he recalls. “I’m obsessed with the moss and the lichen on those cliffs. [They’re] some bad-ass cliffs.
On to more important things, like that new album. Strangers to Ourselves is the indie-rockers' sixth album and the follow-up to their most successful to date – 2007's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank brought their sound to a new audience – buoyed by their mega radio hit Float On in 2004 – but its success didn't factor into anything Brock was writing.
“Nah, nah, nah,” he says emphatically. “I just can’t f***ing be bothered to worry about that sort of stuff. I worry about things like ‘Am I being too clear? Am I being too literal in the song?’ I like sharing songs and, in doing so, you have to think about ‘What’s the best way I can share this experience with people?’, not ‘Will this song sell more albums’?”
The last time Modest Mouse recorded an album, they had guitar whiz Johnny Marr on board as a fully paid-up member. “In all fairness to us, we were doing it before Johnny was in the band for a good deal of time,” he points out. “Is Johnny missed? Yeah, I miss that guy every day. He’s one of the funniest, smartest people I’ve ever had the privilege to be around – he’s really hot shit. But musically, no, we’re covered. We’re all right.”
They did, however, enlist the talents of another rather unexpected musician – namely Big Boi, one half of Outkast. The band recorded a version of the songs Coyotes and Lampshades on Fire in his Atlanta studio, although neither made the final cut. "I really love what Big does; he's such a stylish man, a smart dude and a bad-ass. I'd say over a year before we actually finished writing it, we had a collection of songs and thought 'It'd be good to try this out'.
“We ended up partying more than we ended up recording. That’s the danger with good company – you don’t get to work. But we weren’t really done writing the songs. Hopefully we’ll do something else together at some stage, but those sessions were just for fun.”
Lyrically, the songs on Strangers to Ourselves came from the usual sprawling sources that inform Brock's songwriting. The title is drawn from a Virginia Woolf quote. The Best Room is inspired by his encounter with a UFO, while the aforementioned Lampshades on Fire touches on "partying during the apocalypse". With Brock turning 40 this year, does that – and the album's title – signify a new awareness of his own mortality?
“I dunno,” he says, ponderously. “I’ve only got one ticket so I’ve been on the same f***ing ride this whole time. I’m not sure if it’s a long ride or a short ride – I can’t really say that I’m getting real perspective on anything.
“I’m very aware of the world’s mortality. I remember being worried about environmental issues as a kid, before it was even a f***ing topic. Me? I’m just a skin cell on the world, so my mortality doesn’t really mean dick all.’”
He may claim that he has spent his 39 years “falling down the stairs”, but he is certain that after over two decades of fronting Modest Mouse’s frequently fluctuating line-up, there is plenty more to say under the banner. There is even the bulk of another album’s worth of material on the boil, which he hopes to finish in his free time over the next year.
It has been a long time since the first Modest Mouse album, This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About; 19 years, in fact. How does the almost 40-year-old Isaac Brock feel that he has changed as a person and as a songwriter during that time? He pauses, allowing himself a chuckle.
“If you’d asked me that question prior to making this record, the answer would have been ‘Not much’. With this record in particular, I don’t feel like I walked out of it the same person I walked in. Sadly, I’m less optimistic, definitely [more so than] the early days of the band. I’m currently more resigned to fatality, but that could just be this week.
“It’s like asking someone who doesn’t have any f***ing mirror what they look like – I’m not allowed the privilege of perspective on this. I’m not really sure how it looks from the outside.
"From the inside, it's like someone gave me a giant bin of puzzle pieces, from when I was doing Long Drive until now. It's the same bin, but occasionally some asshole comes by and just dumps some more pieces in there. I'm still just trying to sort it out and figure out which puzzle pieces go in the right f***ing place."
Strangers to Ourselves is out now. Modest Mouse play The Helix, Dublin, on July 10th
Modest traveller: Brock does Ireland
"I've only ever taken five vacations in my life to a different country that wasn't related to touring. I travel a lot and I could tell you what backstage at venues and bars around the world look like – but if you ask me what goes on two miles outside of town, I can't tell you anything. Except Ireland. Three trips out of my five in my life have been to Ireland."
