Ugly Casanova's "Lay Me Down"

Isaac Brock is busy. Modest Mouse, a popular indie rock band who have sold some records, are headlining just about every festival this summer (unless their ARCHENEMIES PAVEMENT are headlining them, instead*). He devotes a large amount of time to sitting for portraits with wild boars, so that the mayor of Portland, America's largest combination Bike Rack Whole Foods, can have some art to hang in his office. When he has any time left over from all of this exertion, he spends it talking to his team of Superlawyers, who he keeps in constant employ in order to properly restrain me from contacting him directly in pursuit of a full-body latex cast to serve as the new centerpiece for the shrine I keep for him in my closet.

*note: I am completely willing to take Isaac Brock and Stephen Malkmus out to dinner in order to help them lay to rest this legendary and not at all completely fabricated archrivalry.

Apparently, Brock has time to write songs, too. When I heard the news that Ugly Casanova, Brock's long-dormant side project, would contribute 8 new songs to the soundtrack of a film, I was so excited that I tweeted about it in all caps. (ALL RIGHT, IT'S HARD TO PROPERLY SHOW ENTHUSIASM IN THE MODERN INTERNET AGE, OK?!!?! TRUST ME I WAS PUMPED.) The film in question is 180 South, a documentary about surfing and x-treme nature sports in Patagonia, all common themes to Modest Mouse's music (because, what?). Still, Brock could do the soundtrack for Sex in the City 3: Carrie Saves Kabul and I'd still buy three copies on compact disc.

"Lay Me Down," the first officially released track from the upcoming album, shows Brock comfortably settling back into Sharpen Your Teeth territory -- back porch banjo, ramshackle percussion, some trumpet here and there. This is Brock living his toothless woodsman dream, something from which he usually restrains himself in Modest Mouse, at least slightly ("Devil's Workday" and "So Much Beauty in Dirt" come to mind as the strongest breaches in the dam). Of course, the most effective instrument here is Brock's voice, which becomes increasingly unhinged as the song goes on. "Blisters on my feet" become "blisters on my heart," and soon the words become unintelligible altogether, Brock getting blisters on his throat from barking Ugly Casanova back into existence. Excuse me while I go light some incense for the shrine.

--Corey