Modest Mouse have announced their first new album in five years, and in typical fashion they have done it by changing lanes rather than repeating themselves. An Eraser and a Maze lands on June 5, marking the band’s first release on Glacial Pace Recordings, the longtime imprint of frontman Isaac Brock, after more than two decades with Epic Records.
Produced by Brock with additional work from Jackknife Lee, Suzy Shinn and Justin Raisen, the album reportedly pulls threads from every era of the band’s catalogue. That feels fitting for a group whose history has moved from cult outsiders to unlikely mainstream force without ever sanding down their strange edges. From the knotty brilliance of The Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon & Antarctica through to the breakthrough of Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Modest Mouse have always sounded like a band arguing with the world in real time.
New opener Picking Dragon’s Pockets arrives with a blast of familiar urgency. It is loud, restless and wired with the kind of crooked anthemics the band have long made their own. Previously released track Look How Far… keeps Brock’s sardonic instincts intact, including the cutting line: “Look how far we’ve come / oh my god we’re so fucking dumb.” Few writers do existential frustration with quite so much bite.
Stream it HERE.
The move to Glacial Pace also carries symbolic weight. For a band this deep into their career, releasing music through Brock’s own label suggests a renewed sense of autonomy. Rather than functioning as a legacy act, Modest Mouse seem more interested in reshaping the terms around them.
Backseat Mafia caught the band when they played Sydney in 2023, where the live show confirmed what the records have always suggested: Modest Mouse remain unpredictable, sharp and fully capable of turning disquiet into communion. That tension has always been their engine.
Pre-save the album HERE.
