Modest Mouse wander through An Eraser and a Maze with bruised wisdom

Modest Mouse’s An Eraser and a Maze arrives carrying more weight than a standard new-album cycle. It is the band’s first full-length since the death of founding drummer Jeremiah Green, and that absence inevitably changes the air around the music. Isaac Brock now stands as the sole original member, which could make the record feel like an ending, but the more interesting reading is that it sounds like a recalibration. Modest Mouse have always been best when their songs seem half-lost and half-prophetic, stumbling through weird American scenery with a cracked grin and a map drawn by someone untrustworthy. This album appears to lean into mortality, legacy and the mess of having survived your own mythology. It may not be a clean return to early chaos, but it does not need to be. A maze is still a place worth entering if the voice inside it remains this strange.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/modest-mouse-an-eraser-and-a-maze