Modest Mouse

The Moon & Antarctica was Modest Mouse's first major label record, but it sounds pretty damn indie. Many of these musings are more moody and melancholic than the group's previous works, but songs like "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" and "A Different City" rely on the pointy and angular arrangements for which the band is known.

Production notwithstanding, the major-label move is the lyric sheet, which situates their circular minor-key riffs in a congruent worldview: eternal recurrence as infinite regress as cosmic bummer. Isaac Brock may be every bit the ass he claims, but basically he seems chagrined that he was ever so inept or unlucky as to get caught up in this, as the saying goes, downward spiral. And unlike other rock pessimists we might name, he's so modest about it that he ends up with an uplifting representation of human life as damn shame. (Grade - A-)