Editors Note: It's amazing how tunes can take on entirely new meanings while listening to a track in the city/region the music was influenced by. (example: listen to Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden during the rainy season in the upper Northwest)
In 1996 Modest Mouse released their first official full-length record, This Is A Long Drive for Someone With Nothing To Think About. It's an album worth latching onto during rainy afternoons while self-diagnosing your habitual inner-worriment. Track three (Custom Concern) struck a particular cord of subjective appreciation when FYM first moved to Seattle.
Imagine endless days (111 to be exact) of searching for a new career in a new town (David Bowie, Low reference) followed by repetitive morning walks seeing your wife off to her bus stop/new job, while you ask yourself how am I going to survive (get a job) and make this happen- the American Dream. The boundless emotional weight, could consume anyone's mind with the darkness (Black Lodge, Twin Peaks type stuff). Luckily music (Custom Concern by Modest Mouse) was there to ease the veiled spirit, and redefined our perspective on what was once considered to be important.
Custom Concern delicately opens with a dash of instrumentally despairing cultural sobriety. The songs relevance for FYM is the organic three act lyrical tumble through the stress ones society pressures the human condition to submit to. Issac Brock's unspoiled raw vocal yearning sets the focus with lyrics like:
The custom concern for the people, Build up the monuments and the steeples to wear out our eyes. I get up just about noon, My head sends a message for me to reach for my shoes and then walk... (screaming) Got to go to work, Got to go to work, got to have a job..
Goes through the parking lot fields, Didn't see no signs that they will yield and then thought... This'll never end, this'll never end, this'll never stop.
Message read on the bathroom wall said, 'I don't feel at all like I fall' And we're losing all touch, losing all touch, building a desert.
The dismal landscape Modest Mouse creates is an undeniably relatable warning. FYM's Jam of the Day is a motivational tune, that is- a warm blanket of blunt sentiment, refreshing the spirit to be true to the inner vision inside us all. We hope Modest Mouse will pull out this deep-cut live when they play the 2011 Sasquatch Festival this May! For more info go HERE. Cheers, FYM.
FYM PRESS PLAY- Jam of the Day, Custom Concern:
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