Jon Dolan
View all posts by Jon Dolan June 8, 2026
Courtesy of grandstand On “Remember Yourself,” a elegiac, artfully shambling highlight from the new Modest Mouse album, Isaac Brock gives us lines that might as well as advertising copy for the record: “Try to maintain an open mind/But if things aren’t working, don’t you waste your time/Yeah, it can be trippy, and it can be fine.” At once open-minded, trippy, and more or less fine, Modest Mouse’s first new work since 2021’s The Golden Casket finds the man behind one of alt-rock’s long-running success stories taking stock in the meaning of life and the weight of existence over songs that ramble and tamble, at times tilting towards glory, in other moments coming relatably unglued.
It’s being released on Brock’s own Glacial Pace Records, after a long run on major label Epic that included 2004’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News, containing the surprise hit “Float On,” and 2007’s comparatively ornery We Were All Dead Before The Ship Sank. That run ended with The Golden Casket, which opened with the less than inviting “Fuck Your Acid Trip,” and drifted from the kind of spacious, slippery guitar escapades the band does well towards glitchier abstractions, and felt like a forced artistic end-point. This makes An Eraser and a Maze their first album on an indie label since their 1997 masterpiece The Lonesome Crowded West.
Their newest roams freer musically, with an unburdened wandering feel. Despite its dubious title, opener “Picking Dragon’s Pockets” has a bright melody and cagey rhythm that’ll make “Float On” fans feel at home. Brock surveys a world of cultural commodification where “we’ve been eating our own,” then sums up his survivor’s spirit with lines like “The looked-at side of a microscope/Voice to skull, try to crush your soul/But we’re pretty tricky little animals.” On “Life’s A Dream,” latticed guitars stretch out over booming drums and rumbling bass, as Brock works to convince himself that the song’s title might be more or less accurate, even as he savors its irony. “Third Side of the Moon” is a glowering, bitter reckoning with grief, beginning stark and foreboding and only getting more dire from there.
