Indie-rock veterans Modest Mouse are officially ending their five-year studio silence. The band has announced that their tenth studio album, ‘An Eraser and a Maze’, will arrive on 5 June, marking a significant shift in their career trajectory. For the first time in over two decades, the group is stepping away from the major-label machinery of Epic Records to release music via Glacial Pace Recordings—the long-running independent imprint helmed by frontman Isaac Brock.
To celebrate the news, the band has unleashed the album’s opening gambit, ‘Picking Dragon’s Pockets’, accompanied by a new visualiser. The track is a quintessential Modest Mouse explosion: a bombastic, high-energy anthem that tackles the exhaustion of navigating a self-destructive and manipulative modern world. It follows in the footsteps of the recently shared ‘Look How Far...’, which saw Brock in peak sardonic form, deliver the biting observation: "Look how far we’ve come / oh my god we’re so fucking dumb."
The origins of the new record trace back to the immediate aftermath of 2021’s ‘The Golden Casket’. Originally, Brock sat on a handful of tracks that nearly became a new release for his cult-favourite side project, Ugly Casanova. However, the material eventually blossomed into a full-band effort, produced by Brock alongside a heavy-hitting team including Jacknife Lee, Suzy Shinn, and Justin Raisen.
Conceptually, the album plays with physics-inspired themes of simultaneous timelines. It’s a record where the jagged edges of their 90s output seem to shake hands with the polished psych-pop of their recent years. As for the inspiration, Brock is famously wary of over-analysing his art.
“For this one, I turned off my filter and just let it all happen. Even though every goddamn musician says that when they put out a record. I mean, go ahead and listen to the three-minute mark of any interview between a musician and Terry Gross …”
Reflecting on his songwriting process, Brock added: “Thoughts, emotions, feelings, all that stuff … you're like the soup, and it’s not always easy to pick out the ingredients. I don't dwell on things much. I don't grieve much. I'm not sure I'm a person. I feel like I should have more feelings than I do. But then, you know, I'll sing stuff. And I'm like, Oh, there it is. Oh — it's in there.”
‘An Eraser and a Maze’ is available for pre-order now on CD and double vinyl, including exclusive colour variants. Get your ears on ‘Picking Dragon’s Pockets’ now and catch the band’s latest updates on Instagram.
