Modest Mouse: Everywhere And His Nasty Parlour Tricks

Released as a palate-cleanser following last year's massive rock banquet The Moon & Antarctica, Modest Mouse's EP Everywhere And His Nasty Parlour Tricks collects four songs from a promotional vinyl record recorded at the same time as the 2000 disc, a medley remix of album tracks, and three new recordings. The direction Modest Mouse takes with its next full-length will determine whether Everywhere represents the last few notes of a sound that came to fruition on Moon & Antarctica, or a mere placeholder; for now, the resumption of elliptical hooks and mind-bending patter is rewarding enough. The EP justifies itself with its second song, "Night On The Sun," a seven-and-a-half-minute spirit-raiser which alternates a fat, circular riff and a springy web of echoing guitars and drums, providing bandleader Isaac Brock with the buoyancy needed to growl out its stick-in-the-head lyric. Other winners on Everywhere include "You're The Good Things" (a twangy acoustic number which ramps up to light-speed while Brock sings about the gilding of dead lilies) and "So Much Beauty In Dirt" (a brief, trippy rap about the fun of doing nothing). Brock has cultivated a singular vocal personality—visionary street-corner preacher and creepy beat poet all in one—and merged it with music that spirals and tunnels, reiterating his recurring themes of pointless journeys and patterns of behavior, all culminating in death and rebirth. So it's no surprise that Everywhere And His Nasty Parlor Tricks holds steady. Modest Mouse's goal involves gathering as much as possible on the way to a destination, without actually arriving.