The Moon & Antarctica
by Modest Mouse

From sageamagoo TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/03/2013 23:46 | #66939 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Happymeal has obviously not noticed the album is in the top 100 by now. While we wait patiently for his excited comment, I'll take the time to express my own love for the album.

This is the kind of sound that takes you completely by surprise. And no, not in some flashy or strange way, but in the subtlest way possible. Right from the beginning, you feel a connection to the album, a sort of obligation to sit down and listen to what the album has to offer. The part where the album first takes you by surprise is not when the drums start beating harder or when the guitar lick becomes more frantic. It's that first silence. Right at the beginning of 3rd Planet. It gives you just that moment to reflect on the single lyric spoken to begin the album.

3rd Planet in general is a great song - actually, the first three songs are all amazing, but in my opinion, they are not the best the album has to offer. The songs that take that award are much more sparse and floyd-y.

Actually, I'm surprised I hardly see any love for The Cold Part around here. I knew on my first listen that it was a masterpiece, and it's the lowest rated on the album! Perhaps I'm the one at fault, and not the 40-odd other people rating the tracks, but I think the reason I like this album so much is because it's *not* the kind of thing you sing along to. No other album in my collection compels me to sit and listen and think as much as this does. Besides, of course, Demon Days, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, I was getting to my favourite song from the album. As much as I love The Cold Part, The Stars Are Projectors blows it out of the water. It's the longest, most intricate, most complex, most emotionally charged song on the whole album and one of my favourites of all time. I don't know how it is on the original release, but I have the remastered edition at home and the production is perfect, as with the rest of the album.

And if I'm going to mention production, I have to mention the flow. This is an ALBUM at heart, and is best enjoyed as a whole. The way most songs end with an idea from the next song is amazing, and makes the whole thing an experience difficult to pin down. In fact, the album is too great for one to comprehend in the first few gos. It's yet another reason I think it's so fantastic: I can tell that I do not fully comprehend it yet. I doubt I ever will, with it's poetry and mystery and subtle, minute details, and every time I listen to it I get something different out of it.

I have stopped thinking of words to describe the experience of hearing Modest Mouse's Magnum Opus. It's impossible to write this comment in one session, the album is that awesome. So let me finish with this. It is a thinker's album. If you do not want to pay full attention and give back in effort what it gives you in beauty you will never enjoy this as much as you can. Simply writing this review has elevated my appreciation for it.

Actually, I'm going to go update my chart now. Have fun listening, and understand you will spend a great amount of time interpreting, imagining, understanding, and enjoying this masterwork. (Edited)

From paladisiac TOP 100 COMMENTER 01/03/2012 20:05 | #34322 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Great album of social isolation and the trappings of humanity and the barrenness of existence and all heavenly points in-between. the moon & antarctica starts off with "3rd planet" where Isaac Brock starts with "Everything that keeps me together is falling apart / I've got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over" then sings "the universe is shaped exactly like the earth. if you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were." That's a great encapsulation of how the mundanity of our lives is set against a grander picture, with an explanation somewhere out there in nothingness. Yes, my interpretation, further illustrated on track #3 (one of the first 2 tracks i heard) "dark center of the universe", where brock starts off confronting someone's disapproval with "I might disintegrate into the thin air, if you'd like / I'm not the dark center of the universe, like you thought" and contains a lot of fun quotes like "it took a lot of work to be the ass that i am / and i'm pretty damn sure that anyone can / easily, equally f*ck you over" and "Everyone's life ends, but no one ever completes it / Dry or wet ice, they both melt and you're equally cheated" and "If you can't see the thin air than why the hell should you care?" "tiny cities made of ashes" is nihilist fun, with quotes like "I just got a message that said "Yeah, hell has frozen over" / I Got a phone call from the Lord sayin' "Hey boy, get a sweater. Right now!"" and "I'm wearin' myself a t-shirt that says "The world is my ashtray" / Our hearts pump dust and our hair's all grey" This album is perfectly sequenced as you can easily guess at the overall premise by consecutive song titles alone: "3rd planet", "gravity rides everything", "dark center of the universe", "tiny cities made of ashes" and "a different city" which describes a city "with no friends or family" where "rust is a fire / and our blood oxidizes". Post/apocalyptic millennium fever. "the cold part" of the whole world is represented by Antarctica, "this bone bleached part of the world". Flies gather around all of us and on "the stars are projectors" (the other of the first 2 songs i first heard, this one via cmj) "In the last second of life, they're gonna show you how / How they run this show, sure, run it into the ground" where "God is a woman and the woman is / An animal that animals man, and that's you " showing life as "a math equation" asking "where do circles begin?", wrapping back to the futile cycle of life mentioned earlier. I love how this song stretches out sounding like a self-eating spiral at the end. This song and album carry a strong intertwined intelligence and philosophy. Isaac Brock sings in tongues throughout the album, possibly singing about the absurdity of religion's second life singing "And I'm sitting outside by my mudlake / Waiting for the pack to take me away / And right after I die / The dogs start floating up towards the glowing sky / Now they'll receive their rewards". There is a minor 2-song lull ("lives" sounds like it starts over -- a rebirth?) between "i came as a rat" ("It takes a long time, but God dies too / But not before he'll stick it to you") and "what people are made of" (which ends with the albums theme bluntly stated "the one thing you taught me bout human beings was this / They ain't made of nothin but water and shit"), but on a 15 song album the physicist is due for his prune juice break. There are atmospherics like the backing vocals on "the cold part" that we just won't hear as powerfully again. (Edited)

From 9999 TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/26/2015 21:07 | #137885 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Modest Mouse's early work may be the most recognizable link between the Pixies legacy and the Arcade Fire generation in terms of musical progression and artistic creativity, and The Moon & Antarctica is the definitive cornerstone. On top of that, its skillful, complex composition is crowned by consistently engaging, thought-provoking, plainly spectacular songwriting. One of the best albums of the century and an essential listen for any music lover, in my humble opinion.

From Dingerbell 01/02/2014 12:10 | #99526 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This is possibly the definitive indie rock album. It's consistency is its major strong point, and it maintains this while being incredibly diverse in song-stuctures and instrumentation. Those who say that the only good songs are the first three have clearly been listening to a different album, some of my favourite songs on the album (What People Are Made Of, Lives and I Came As a Rat) are right at the end. To be honest though, pretty much all the songs are absolutely incredible. Even my brothers, who know relatively little about music and don't listen to a lot, love this album.

And Wild Packs of Family Dogs is one of the best songs I've ever heard. No joke. I honestly find it so funny. (Edited)

Though it may not seem like it to some, this album is definitely the most logical step forward from The Lonesome Crowded West. The pissed off teenager from the last album becomes the much more mature adult here, his anger confined to only a few brief moments on this record. All of the anger over urbanization is drowned in fear, fear of the universe, fear of death, fear of the afterlife. In "Lives," this becomes particularly clear, in which the pessimistic minor key gives way to major key acoustic strumming string accompanied section in which Brock sings "It's hard to remember/it's hard to remember/ you're alive for the first time/and it's hard to remember/it's hard to remember/you're alive for the last time," an idea that many refuse to believe and nearly as many others are terrified of. This album is much tighter and much more polished than their previous album, which doesn't necessarily make it a better album, but both of them are undeniably classics.