Modest Mouse Share “Third Side Of The Moon” Ahead of First Indie Album Since 1997

If you want a useful snapshot of where Modest Mouse sit now, Chris DeVille’s report from the band’s Ice Cream Floats concert cruise is probably the place to start. It gets at a few of the bigger questions hanging around the group at this point in their career: what it means to age into cult-figure status, how indie rock has quietly hardened into lifestyle culture, and even why the cruise never made it to Alaska, which was apparently Isaac Brock’s original plan.

All of that matters because Modest Mouse are clearly in a new phase, and not just in the nostalgic, legacy-act sense. They’ll be in Salt Lake City this weekend for Kilby Block Party, and while that trip is part of my own cross-country plans rather than some deep-dive assignment, it lands alongside a more consequential bit of news: next month, the band will self-release An Eraser And A Maze, their first album on an independent label since The Lonesome Crowded West in 1997.

We’ve already heard early tracks “Look How Far…” and “Picking Dragons’ Pockets.” Now comes “Third Side Of The Moon,” a woozy, contemplative song that has been part of Modest Mouse’s live set for the last few years. It fits the band’s particular gift for turning lunar imagery into something unsettled and strangely human. The title suggests a geography that doesn’t quite exist, which feels right for a group that has spent years making music out of drift, doubt, and the spaces in between.

An Eraser And A Maze is out 6/5 on Isaac Brock’s own Glacial Pace label.