For Modest Mouse frontman, Isaac Brock, life is surreal. At least, that’s often the message fans get when hearing his elastic, exacerbated, thoughtful and gruff tunes. And that’s the draw, right? To feel as if you’re in a space ship that’s more bucket of bolts than streamlined machine propelling through the universe.
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Here below, we wanted to dive a bit deeper into the psyche of the musician, to understand what Brock thinks and has to say about the world outside of his catchy, rough-edged songs. What are his thoughts on life and life, his craft and the world at large? Indeed, these are the best 20 Isaac Brock quotes.
[RELATED: The Unequivocal 5 Best Modest Mouse Songs]
1. “I like Modest Mouse. I’m our biggest fan. And enemy. I won’t waste people’s time by putting out a Modest Mouse record just because. That’s fair, right?”
2. “If I start working on something, I get a little too driven.”
3. “‘Float On’ was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.”
4. “Science, science is great. I love science. With any luck, it’ll save us all.”
5. “I toy around with the whole Biblical thing, just as amazing characters.”
6. “I didn’t mean to live in Portland. It was kind of an accident—I mean, the equivalent of my car breaking down there and me being like, ‘Well… I guess this is what I’m doing. I just can’t find a better alternate.'”
7. “I don’t think I ever write songs involving politics, because they get dated way too quick. Any view you have can usually be made into something more general, and that can stand throughout time.”
8. “I made a point when I made the Ugly Casanova record to not write a song and then say, ‘This is a Modest Mouse song’ or ‘This is an Ugly Casanova song.’ The people who were open to it not being a Modest Mouse record liked it.”
9. “The guy who kind of identified as my dad was my dad’s brother, who was the second person my mom married.”
10. “Portland hardly got to have an identity before that identity became a joke—I live in a joke. Seattle at least got to wear out its identity before it became a joke.”
11. “I remember the last time the Grateful Dead played in Seattle, at the Seattle Center. I was living there, and after the show, I was walking to work near there, and I’d never seen so much debris. There were mountains of garbage.”
12. “I don’t much like things to go by somebody’s name, like the ‘Bob Jones Group Jam Band.'”
13. “I’m not a big fan of the interview. It’s a lot of questions I don’t have answers for, a lot of questions about the music industry.”
14. “Even when I was a kid, I always showed up late for school every day. It got to the point where they had my late slips filled for every day of the school year in advance, so all they had to do was fill in what time I got there.”
15. “Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.”
16. “I watch the same cartoons over and over again. I watch Adult Swim. I watch ‘Futurama’ repeatedly.”
17. “I’ve gotten into surfing a bit. I can’t stand up for more than five seconds, but I like the fact that I can paddle out into oblivion.”
18. “Now we’ve gotten accustomed to reality shows where the goal is to see people acting foolish.”
19. “If I find myself just not feeling like writing songs anymore, I think I’ll drop it. There’s enough bad, insincere music out there. I don’t need to contribute to that.”
20. “When I do write, it happens really easily. I’ll just kind of sing along to whatever I’m playing, then find a line to build off of, then sit down and write. When I do write, I take care of business!”
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