*** Modest Mouse

THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST

(Up)

Modest Mouse singer/guitarist Isaac Brock seems fascinated by the idea of travel. His songs' lyrics are full of highways and trains and buses and places, and they speed from one idea to another in a blur. His band know the best way to travel: to keep making the same motions over and over. They lock into edgy, hyper-rhythmic riffs that each instrument has to carry part of, cycling them with the smooth power and tiny variations of a combustion engine, for two minutes or 10 at a time. That could get old over The Lonesome Crowded West's 74 minutes, but Modest Mouse have a nice habit of breaking their own rules: one track incorporates scratching, another has acoustic guitars and fiddles. And though Brock's parched, double-tracked bark is an acquired taste, what leaps out is his startlingly cool sense of guitar tone.

-- Douglas Wolk