Review: Modest Mouse at The Anthem on Oct. 18

I counted 12 flannel T-shirts within the first minute of arriving at the Saturday night Modest Mouse show before realizing this little game of mine was a futile endeavor: I would never be able to count them all. Arriving at the Anthem 45 minutes before showtime allowed me to watch the crowd get settled in. Millennials made up the bulk of the audience, with a fair amount of Gen Z and Gen Xers sprinkled in. “Fuck ICE” was written on an amp on stage in tape, fluorescent under the black light. As the night got closer to eight o’clock, people filled in the massive venue, excited for the opener. Built to Spill, led by Doug Martsch, took the stage. My first thought was that Built to Spill is the most Modest Mouse-coded name I think any band could have. My second thought was that the old man on stage had the sickest beard I had ever seen. The crowd was much more familiar with the opening band than at most concerts I’ve attended. It set a fantastic mood for the night. The three-piece indie rock act from Idaho had a 90s-era offbeat angst akin to Modest Mouse. You could feel the kick drum in your heart, vibrating through your chest cavity. The audience couldn’t get enough, with one fan shouting at the end of their set, “You make beautiful music, man!”

The energy continued when Modest Mouse took the stage. Isaac Brock, donning a baseball cap and grey suit glowing under the light, riled the crowd up with “3rd Planet,” the opening song to their third studio album, The Moon and Antarctica (2000). They played the album through to the end, celebrating the 25th anniversary of its release. “3rd Planet” is one of my personal favorites of their discography, starting steady and rhythmic and developing into an atmospheric but hard-hitting rock number that had the crowd hollering. I’ve always considered the song to be about mourning the loss of a child, either from an abortion or miscarriage (I won’t pretend to know), and the innate senselessness of the world.

When the band had finished out the album, they left the stage. The crowd screamed for an encore, but the stage was dark for a long time. Silence. Then… is that the Jaws music? “They may be milking this a little,” said a guy behind me. But it was all worth it when they retook the floor to play on. The encore was a mix of roaring crowd pleasers, such as “Lampshades on Fire and Float On” (2004), and slower, deep cuts, like “Little Motel” (2007) and “Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset” (1996). One of the most striking moments of the night was when the mostly instrumental “Whale Song” (2009) filled the auditorium with a haunting, wailing electric guitar solo, leaving the audience dead quiet and transfixed in the ghostly ambiance.

I took home two mementos. The first was a homemade bracelet with lettered beads that spelled out “THE MOON N ANTARTICA” given to me by a stranger named Carson, who didn’t speak a word to me, but sang even more lyrics than I did. The second was the setlist which was balled up and thrown into the crowd by the stagecrew after the show. I had never been more excited about catching something in my life. The whole show was an immersion into the band’s most otherworldly album, and I can’t help but feel that I witnessed something special. It was a pure drug—from the moments of eerie wanderlust to screechy, shouty vocals that reminded you that for all his quiet introspection, Brock still had a bite.

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Hadley Brooks is a sophomore at Georgetown.