Exploring a jagged, lo-fi post-rock after forming in the mid-’90s, Modest Mouse became unlikely chart-toppers with a volatile mix of punk-inspired rawness and simmering atmosphere in the following decade. The band first broke through to the mainstream audience with the platinum-selling Good News for People Who Love Bad News, their fourth full-length, in 2005. Johnny Marr, legendary guitarist with the Smiths, was an official member when they went all the way to number one with 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Confirming their status as genuine rock stars, eight years later, 2015’s Strangers to Ourselves reached number three on the Billboard 200 (without Marr). After closing out the decade with a run of non-album singles, the band returned in 2021 with their seventh LP, The Golden Casket. Sad Sappy SuckerModest Mouse was founded in 1992 by guitarist and vocalist Isaac Brock, bassist Eric Judy, and drummer Jeremiah Green. Brock, who had a nomadic childhood, was only 18 and living in a shed next to his mother’s trailer home when Modest Mouse began working together, with the shed becoming the band’s rehearsal space and base of operations. In 1994, Modest Mouse booked time at Calvin Johnson’s Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, Washington to cut their first record, and Johnson released their debut 7″, “Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect?,” on his K Records label. Modest Mouse soon began work on an album, but the project was abandoned and the material went unreleased until 2001, when it appeared on a collection called Sad Sappy Sucker. Continue reading…