Right on, Dave. Though, I wasn't sold on the show until that encore. It was fantastic. They pulled "Broke" out of the vault, and "Spitting Venon" was just wicked. It's my fav off the new album, and I think I even heard lyrics from "I'm not a Rat" intertwined with it. They put more effort into playing Spitting Venom than any other song from their new album.

Wish I could have made it/afforded the scalper price (never end up hearing about these things until they're right on top of me).

I've always been a fan of "Bury Me With It", though. Probably my favorite track off that album.

my apologies for pushing any buttons, but i didn't find this to be a very well-planned review. where's the feeling? everyone knows that "the guitar sounds like this" and "they played that." who cares? modest mouse is one of the most promising bands of our time. they are going to be my children's led zeppelin and deserve to be observed as such. maybe its because i was ecstatic beyond all reason, or maybe it was just because i know what this band means to people, but i didnt find that this review gave any justice to the undeniable electricity that was in that room monday night. hello, my name is rachel, and i write the music column for the avon high school echo. i take myself a little seriously.

i dont think thats fair just because the pixies and the talking heads are in frequent circulation on everyones ipods today, including my own, so you cant retire them just yet - modest mouse isnt todays pixies or talking heads just because the pixies and the talking heads already have that covered. people are too quick to compare todays bands to music past just because its something avant garde. im not saying they have any similarities to led zeppelin music-wise, im talking about impact-wise. its apparent that today every 14-year-old boy found the secret hoard of his fathers vintage tees from his hey day. i find the same thing happening to the shirt i purchased at modest in 30 years. modest is on to something big - a force to be reckoned with. as for a bloated arena rock act, i didnt see a trace of the pathetic has-been-washed-up-80's-ratt-def-leppard-whatever-rolled-around-at-verizon-this-summer in modest's flawless performance, so i dont know what you were watching.

rachel, i am very sorry that you are in high school and have yet to truly discover the power of music, not just the greatness of your favorite bands. modest mouse will never be this generations zeplin, nor your childrens. and the more i think about daves assertion and comparison to the talking heads and pixies, i can see WHY he says that (shouting vocals, mid-tempo rock your parents get uncomfortable around, etc.), but they arent as good as those bands remain. modest mouse started as a fairly exciting avant post rock trio and has become a quite boring sextet with little to nothing to say to old school, mid school, or new listeners. they are catchy college rock. nothing more. they arent alternative. sorry they arent. check volume #25 of kidz-bop. bands that go against the grain are not on disney records.

rachel i am happy you like a band i used to think was one of the best in the American underground sceene. but after years of watering down true youth-culture emotion and not making any statements to the fact that they are now welcome frat house music, i cannot help but to thank my friend for the free tickets and NEVER see this band again.

hear me whine about it here!: http://rockitbomb.com/modest-mouse

and sorry rachel, but youre wrong. you will find that out after you go to some real 'shows', not just 'concerts'.

oh please don't patronize me. modest mouse hasnt lost anything. its not their fault that todays generation is bored too easily and are therefore reduced to coming up with ways to sell records - this is the world we live in.

Fair enough, Blank. But we were all 17 once. I know I thought R.E.M. was infallible back then. Obviously my judgment was a little off. I didn't know a lot of things then, but I did know this: The last thing I needed was to be lectured about my taste in music by people nearly twice my age.

As someone who works with high schoolers and music everyday, I'll have to agree with Matt. Arguing tastes is futile. If Modest Mouse is the "worst" this girl listens to then she's far ahead of me when I was her age. I thought people with Depeche Mode and Cure shirts were weirdos.

I doubt we'll ever again see an artist have a Led Zep (or Elvis, Beatles, Hendrix, Marvin, Cash, etc.) impact on any generation. Tastes are too fragmented. Marketers and corporations need to split the youth into predictable compartments so they know exactly how to sell to each one. There are no longer universal icons.

nowhere did i say MM were rachel's worst good band...maybe youre seeing the dirt on the window, not looking through it with me. music is art, which is subjective. modest mouse, in my opinion, were great, just not anymore. matt, the REM comment would make less sense if they hadnt put out 10 bad albums in a row. and jeff, the latest from the cure and depeche mode are some of the best works from those bands in DECADES. maybe modest mouse will go back to what i loved about them. from a commercial standpoint, theyre crankin' out gold records. from a long time listeners perspective, theyre on auto-pilot.

and if kids today are bored too easily these days, maybe they should stop playing in jam bands and cookie cutter emo/fashion groups and start inovating. just a thought.

Whoa blank, no need to get defensive. I didn't use your name at all in my post, so I'm not sure how you connected my comment with any perceived judgement on your part. I'm just saying teens can do a lot worse than liking present-day Modest Mouse. I know I did worse than my peers at that age--I was rockin' out to Bon Jovi and Poison.

I also didn't make any assessments about The Cure or Depeche Mode's music, either present or past. I just said that I was naive in high school and as (many) high schoolers still do, I falsely labeled it "weird" simply because it was unfamiliar to me.

(Most) kids will always go along with what is fashionable and recognizable. Cool is still the commerce in school and that hasn't changed in decades.

not on defense. just thought i would clarify what a younger, more emotional music journalist saw as "patronizing."

you made assessments about two bands' shirts and their wearers' 'weirdness.' i was simply commenting on their lull in good music. cc devile is still an incredible guitarist, so do get all huffy at me about Poison and their creative output.

"most kids" dont take their love of music and write about it.

Rachel, youre cool in my book for calling out dave on something you feel strongly about.

and dave is cool because Fugazi is one of his favorite bands. nobody has listened to the ride home show, have they? yea.

i agree with about a million points made in these discussions. if kids would stop worshipping their 15 minutes of fame myspace idols maybe bands like modest wouldnt have to work so hard to get attention. theres no such thing as selling out these days - just survival. there is no way that modest's recent stuff could ever compare to that of this is a long drive or lonesome crowded west, but times have changed. the way people percieve music is changing, thus bands must change with it. its a lot easier for an audience (and apparently kidz bop) to accept a clean-cut "float on" rather than a raw, emotional "breakthrough." yeah it sucks, but im not going so sit here and wallow in memories past, i'm going to appreciate what im given because i believe that if a band i love is growing, i should grow with them. new modest is better than no modest.

as far as the concert goes, all i saw was a bunch of drunken 20 somethings having the time of their lives, and that's good enough for me.

I don't think bands need to change with the times. They should fulfill their own emotional and artistic impulses regardless of the culture around them. Once you start to focus on marketing and selling product, then you can think about trends and audience response. A true artist shouldn't be guided by market forces. It's hard to imagine Radiohead making a record and thinking "I wonder where music is at and where it's going?"

I think blank's point was that for MM to become palatable to kids, they had to morph themselves into more idol-like substance. I could be wrong and you may or may not agree.

Go to a Jimmy Buffett concert and you'll see a bunch of drunken 50-somethings having the time of their lives. Doesn't make the music any better.

i just dont get it simply because i never had a problem falling in love with MM's latest album and welcoming it into my musical family. however, i do think that musicians should adapt to the culture around them because that's what music is - it's a mirror to our culture whether its praising it, criticizing it, or throwing it back in its face. no its not fair that the record label execs have so much power, but lets face it, the general public is not forgiving and rely on first impressions - if you don't make the cut they can easily move on to the next in line out of the millions of bands circulating the world wide web. back in the mid-90's when modest was young and new, so was everything else because music was experiencing some great alternative awakening. today, there is something for everyone, and in order to remain one of the front runners in the musical crusade, modest is going to have to up the ante (and in my opinion, the addition of johnny marr did not fail to impress.)

and ultimately, i think where music is at and where it's going should be on everyones mind.

damn rachel - im really with you now. not about the concert, but where this conversation is going. a agree 100% that the artist has every right to take their work where they think it needs to go. granted, im not a fan of MM's new material, but that doesnt mean they shouldnt do it. im not mad that they make money from record sales and not just merch at shows. i wasnt even offended when i saw a $1 poster selling for $10. i just didnt think it was an inspired performance.

two great examples of artists going their way are fugazi and unwound. fugazi consistently keep their style heartfelt and close to their roots while sounding different from album to album. unwound started as a noisy post punk band but their last album was a double cd shoegaze masterpiece. modest mouse makes dance songs now. still relevant, still rocking, just not my bag anymore.

im sure the kidz bop thing was lable driven, and i think kind of funny. there is no selling out, just survival, unless you license your work to know fundamentalist supporters who only care about money and not emotion. can of worms? youre open!

Music can be a reflection on society and culture, but it can also be a window into an artist's emotional or mental state, at which point it becomes personal and not societal.

label execs are losing power day-by-day as they fail to grasp how to profit with new technology.

the general public may rely on first impressions, but a sophisticated listener will not. most of my favorite records are ones I did not immediately love. it was music I wasn't ready for--mainly because I'd never heard anything like it--and it took time for it to grow on me. can't imagine what life would be like if i hadn't given Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In The Aeroplane Over The Sea' a sixth listen. I didn't like it for the first five.

we as media types may care where music is going because that's the nature of the business. but when it comes down to putting on headphones or cranking up the car stereo, the only thing that matters is what the music means to the listener. I've seen everything from Dylan to Wu-Tang Clan to Warped Tour. It all comes down to an artist connecting to an audience at that moment, trends be damned.

allllllright. jeff just named my favorite album ever. im done.

a few photos posted here: http://myoldkyhome.blogspot.com/2007/11/modest-mouse-murat-egyptian-room-111207.html