Modest Mouse Declare Canadians Champions Of Language

When Isaac Brock's marriage proposal comes halfway through our interview, it's not entirely surprising. Modest Mouse's frontman is notoriously hilarious and erratic in interviews, and this one has been no different.

What triggers the aforementioned proposition is the use of the word "impetus" in a question. After I explain its meaning, Brock laughs in disbelief.

"Man, I love talking to Canadians because you guys got all the good fuckin' words in the English language, maybe the best," he says in his unmistakable northwestern drawl. "Actually, I'm giving it to you, you can hold the crown. Always an interesting use of interesting words. Will you marry me?"

After it's established that this is unfeasible, we go back to talking about Modest Mouse's newest opus, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. At that point, I was specifically asking about the impetus for Shins lead singer James Mercer's appearance on three of the record's tracks. The pairing offers an unusual combination of Brock's trademark yelp and Mercer's pristine vocal delivery.

"I had been doing all these vocals on tracks, and I have a tendency to layer vocals, right," says Brock. "I like doing that.

"Some of the songs, like let's say 'Missed The Boat,' for instance, when it hit I guess what you would call the chorus, no matter how many tracks I laid down, it didn't feel right. I didn't feel like I'd gone to a different place. It didn't feel like it had fucking moved or gotten fucking elevated.

"James Mercer, if you're not aware, is probably one of the best singers I've ever heard in my life. More so than you can even tell off his records. He came in to sing and I was just shamed. I was like, 'God, this motherfucker is good!' He's amazing and he's an old friend. I needed someone who could sing who could add some depth to the songs, so that was really the seed. 'Hey, I have his number, I like his singing.'"

Brock is generally that matter-of-fact about most of the aspects of the new album — ex-Smiths member Johnny Marr joining the band was apparently just a case of Brock trying to think of a guitarist he'd like to play with — but the LP itself is anything but ordinary.

The sprawling 14-track release is full of complex arrangements and songs that range from upbeat pop to assaulting rock. A key participant in the equation was producer Dennis Herring, who was able to translate Brock's ever-ready well of ideas into a highly coherent, singular piece.

"I'm an extreme perfectionist, but I don't like my perfection to be sterile," the singer explains. "Let's say you go into a studio to do a record for a major label that expects, or are hoping for, if not expecting, somehow for you to do something that is gonna get it out to as many people as the last one.

"But I'm in the studio and I'm using these $20 mics without pop-guards, which punk bands don't even do any more. But at the same time, in order to keep ideas like that, and the fact that it was a very complicated record we were trying to make and did end up making, Dennis Herring was a huge help with stuff like that.

"He produced this with what I like to call a 'spotlight.' Let's say you've got a whole landscape. Let's say you're off on a boat looking at a city and all the lights are out and the only way you can see anything is if the spotlight is pointed at it. With six people playing, there's a lot of shit going on sometimes. Sometimes you really just need to focus on the important part.

"My role in this: it's not so easy for me to keep things super-friendly amongst my band of friends and illuminate their parts. So Dennis gets to be the bad guy, eat a lot of shit. His role is to move the spotlight so that even if someone is tap-dancing their ass off on one balcony, he wants to keep focused on the two dudes who are arm-wrestling on the roof about four buildings down. That may be a bit too detailed an analogy. Perfection sounds crappy. Perfection's fucking boring, but focus is alright."

One thing that remained consistent between the new album and the two that came before it was the long wait time. We Were Dead came out almost three years to the week that Good News For People Who Love Bad News hit store shelves. But while the last delay had more to do with the band figuring out whether or not they wanted to keep going, there was no real controversy this time. Well, other than guitarist Dan Gallucci leaving the group under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

"Gallucci left the band, which was a couple days before we were about to go on a tour," Brock says. "We finished that tour.

"While I was on that tour, at the beginning I talked to Johnny, and then a month-and-a-half later I ended up meeting up with him and we started writing and recording everything. So we worked for a very fucking long time on this record. We really, really, really worked hard on this record. I can't even explain how much time, how much of everyone's person went into this."

Modest Mouse will bring the fruits of their intense labour to Toronto's Hummingbird Centre on April 24 and Montreal's Metropolis on April 25.