Spring Season - Modest Mouse @ Balch Fieldhouse, 2/28

Show:

Modest Mouse

Venue:

CU Balch Fieldhouse

Date:

2/28/09

Openers:

Japanese Motors, a surf-rock California group were admittedly silly with lyrics such as ‘Ugly girls are drugs to me,’ but they turned out to be a pretty solid act, with solid bass and energetic melodies.

Mimicking Birds gave a far more finished and serious sound, coming onstage with familiar indie-folk and a vocalist quite reminiscent of Band of Horses’s leader Ben Bridwell.

The Show:

This show, unusually housed in CU Boulder’s small track house off the side of the football stadium, was definitely one to reward long term fans – only four songs all night came from Modest Mouse’s newest album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; “Dashboard” wasn’t played at all. In lieu of the new, more radio-ready material, Isaac Brock put new touches on very old, messy favorites. 1997’s The Lonesome Crowded West saw the most attention, drawing Modest Mouse’s traditional raw energy out from the entire set.

Highlights:

- The hot, dirty, mosh-y and frantic “Doin’ the Cockroach” that proved the worth of having two full-kit drummers onstage this tour.

- “This Devil’s Workday” gets unconventional with a trash can lid stomp routine and brass band, shows off Brock’s completely signature lyric delivery.

- The most perfect close to the show possible, “Custom Concern”, my personal favorite Modest Mouse song ever, puts everyone in a peaceful hypnotic trance at the end of the high-energy show.

Lowlights:

- Serious punctuality issues – Modest Mouse didn’t take the stage until nearly an hour after Mimicking Birds finished, also another 20-minute break before encore.

- Really, really bad sound system. This probably has the venue to blame, but painful mike screeches and feedback both ruined basically every song from We Were Dead, especially “The View” and “We’ve Got Everything,” and also went to piss off Brock, not a fun thing to do.

Overall: 80/100 (Lots of energy / enthusiasm, yet sound quality very hard to get past.)

Setlist:

1. “Paper Thin Walls”

2. “Never Ending Math Equation”

3. “The View”

4. “Dramamine”

5. “The Good Times are Killing Me”

6. “Doin’ The Cockroach”

7. “Fire it Up”

8. “We’ve Got Everything”

9. “Satin in a Coffin”

10. “Float On”

11. “Trucker’s Atlas”

12. “Ohio”

13. “Broke”

14. “Trailer Trash”

15. “Education”

Encore:

“Satellite Skin”

“Black Cadillacs”

“This Devil’s Workday”

“Custom Concern”