For example, the fact that Modest Mouse worked with Dennis Herring at Sweet Tea Studio and at Easley Recording in Memphis. Isaac is the kind of guy you want to shoot the breeze about arcana with. “It’s not a popular destination for anybody who doesn’t go to the University of Mississippi, so the fact that Fat Possum Records is from there, Dennis Herring and John Murry: it’s cool. “It’s strange that over the years so many people that I have worked with are from Oxford, Mississippi,” he riffs. I recount that John is living at a recording studio in Ireland called Transmission Rooms in a place called Longford, and that we had made the pilgrimage to Paddy Kavanagh’s grave in Monaghan the previous day. I tell him that an old buddy from those days, John Murry, said to pass on his regards. Modest Mouse recorded both their stratospheric record Good News for People Who Like Good News and its chart-topping follow-up We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank at Sweet Tea Studio in Oxford Mississippi. He is courteous, mannerly and helpful, even when someone bafflingly asks him where to find an SA-15 fuse. It contains a jeep which he offers to sell to me. Later we take a long virtual stroll around his impressive, factory-size studio in Portland, Oregon. That, of course, is a form of sacrilege! Those first two records, particularly The Lonesome Crowded West were bibles of loose living in mid-90s Galway.
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“My first records, which probably sound pretty sloppy at this point, were poorly recorded because that’s as good as we knew how to do it.” “It’s fun to get back to not getting too precious with your recordings,” he ruminates.
My working relationship with him has been four songs on this record and we’ve started writing and recording stuff together recently. Working with Jacknife, Garrett or whatever, was cool. “However, four of the songs felt like they needed some focus,” he elaborates, “so we were like: ‘Jacknife would you please focus this shit?’ Not because what we had wasn’t good but because he fucking cares. I really enjoyed working with Dave, he helped me make a great record.” He did a really good job, motivating and facilitating. “Then my thumbs got sore,” Isaac adds, “and we got stuff built and it was cool but eventually we really needed a guitar. The kalimba being a ‘thumb piano’, invented in 1960, and based on the African mbira, but with a single row of keys and using the European diatonic scale. “Dave Sardy was great because he knowingly took on a project,” Isaac explains, “where I told him I didn’t want to show up with any songs which sounds like the biggest recording cop out – like I don’t have anything, let’s make a record! And I told him that I wouldn’t play guitar on the record: I just want the whole thing to be based around my playing the kalimba.”
Instead, Ray Charles fashion, he duets with himself and where his savage lungs can’t go, his always interesting guitar does.ĭave Sardy, one time producer of Oasis, and Jacknife Lee – originally of these shores – worked on the production of The Golden Casket, this being the latest offering from the mighty Modest Mouse. Modest Mouse are often compared to the Pixies, but unlike Black Francis, Isaac has had no Kim Deal on backing vocals to flesh out the sonic palette. Across his remarkable body of work to date – with his main outfit Modest Mouse and side-project Ugly Casanova – his voice splinters into a dozen characters, and roles, sometimes even on the same record. He nailed it because Isaac Brock’s voice is the equivalent of an instrument. The drink, of course, has nothing to do with it. “You nailed it,” I reply and we toast the wonders of cider. “Did I get multiple resonances?” he asks. By day’s end, Isaac Brock, head cat of Modest Mouse, is imparting a Tuvan throat singing rendition.
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