NEW ALBUMS
MODEST MOUSE
The Golden Casket
An untypical rail against the modern condition
COLUMBIA
7/10
Those in thrall to Modest Mouse’s well-honed blend of ramshackle punk-folk and predilection for dispensing off-grid wisdom will find much favour with the latest addition to their canon. Across The Golden Casket’s 12 tracks, Issac Brock laments the ever-widening gulf between nature and technology, and the insidious evils of a cultural (and literal) atmosphere swimming with invisible signals. This 21st-century anxiety is reflected across the unstable arrangements of “We Are Between” and “Wooden Soldiers”, before reaching a conceptual pinnacle with “Transmitting Receiving”. Elsewhere, quirkier constructs, such as “Never Fuck A Spider On The Fly”, emit an ominous menace.