Appearance-wise, Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock — dressed simply in a T-shirt and dark jeans and sporting a rumor of a beard for the band’s sold-out show Tuesday at Aragon Ballroom — wasn’t a particularly striking figure. When Brock and his five bandmates took the stage, it looked as if a gaggle of slightly shaggy hipsters had somehow stumbled into Uptown. But all of that changed the moment Brock opened his mouth, the singer-guitarist conjuring images of fevered carnival barkers and mad sea captains as he whooped, howled and bellowed his way through the group’s 90-minute set.
With two drummers and a veritable flea market of shopworn instruments (stand-up bass, banjo, accordion, organ, fiddle and trumpet), the group matched, in lock step, its frontman’s unpredictability, ignoring its biggest hit (the anthemic “Float On”) as it swung from serene passages to foam-flecked oceans of noise — oftentimes in the same song. “Dramamine,” with its Jekyll-and-Hyde tempo shifts, typified this approach, building from astral pinwheels of guitar to thundering waves of sonic feedback.
The performance — joyously devoid of any varnish — maintained a hand-stitched quality throughout. A horn-fueled “King Rat” unwound like a boozy trek through a seedy New Orleans dive; “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” built around a hip-shaking bass line, evolved into fractured dance-rock behind the two drummers’ tribal assault; “Satin in a Coffin” layered banjo, organ and Brock’s frayed-wire vocals into a swampy stew.
With guitarist Johnny Marr (The Smiths) on hiatus (ex-Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild filled the role on this tour), Modest Mouse’s live show hinges even more on its pugnacious frontman.
Fortunately Brock delivered with UPS-like consistency, singing like a backfiring internal combustion engine on “Black Cadillacs,” uncovering the prickly heart of “Satellite Skin” and filling “Baby Blue Sedan” with barbed guitar that seemed patterned after his off-kilter vocal phrasings.
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