Concerts

Explore ‘The Lonesome Crowded West’ with Modest Mouse at Roadrunner

Isaac Brock's long-running band will present the whole of its celebrated masterpiece on Dec. 16.

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“It was from a Virginia Woolf book where she referred to people who were working the grind as ‘modest mouse-like people.’ I wanted to originally name the band Modest Mouse-like People, but that seemed a little long. I regretted the name for some time because it sounds so cutesy. I got really sick of seeing posters with Mighty Mouse on them.”

This is Isaac Brock’s explanation for how the band that he has fronted for 30 years got its name. (The phrase in the Virginia Woolf story “The Mark on the Wall” is actually “modest mouse-coloured people.”)

Modest Mouse released their first two LPs on Up Records, where its labelmates included the Scottish indie pop group The Pastels and fellow American indie rockers Built to Spill.

The second of their Up releases was 1997’s “The Lonesome Crowded West.” Although it would be dwarfed in sales by later efforts, it is almost surely the band’s most influential recording in the unsubtle, epic-in-scope, and sometimes unnerving indie rock vein that they were mining at the time.

In addition to being a profound musical statement, the cover of “LCW” inspired the front of Wilco’s 2001 masterpiece “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” (Okay…I made that up, but it’s not out of the question!)

The occasion of this landmark recording’s 25th anniversary is the reason for Modest Mouse’s current nationwide trek, which kicked off in Missoula, Mont., on Nov. 18 and will arrive at Roadrunner on Dec. 16.

On this tour, Isaac Brock and drummer and fellow lone original member Jeremiah Green – along with decade-long stalwart Russell Higbee (bass guitar) and new member Simon O’Connor (guitar) – will perform the 15-track, 74-minute opus from its first note to its last. These dates will mark the first times in the band’s career that they have attempted such a feat.

This show will definitely be a treat for those who were fans long before Modest Mouse could fill a venue the size of Roadrunner. However, Brock is sure to break out crowd-pleasers such as “Float On” and “Ocean Breathes Salty,” two of the singles from the million-selling 2004 album “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” which fleetingly made the band the closest that they would ever come to being genuine stars. (The follow-up, “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,” debuted at #1 upon its March 20, 2007 release.)

And they released a new album, “The Golden Casket,” last year. So there’s that, too.