Additional personnel: Ben Blankenship (guitar, lap steel guitar, keyboards); Greg Ratajczak (guitar); Tyler Riley (violin); Brian Deck (keyboards); Ben Massarella (percussion); Chiyoko Yoshida, Tim Rutilli (background vocals).

Recorded at Clava Studio, Chicago, Illinois.

Modest Mouse: Isaac Brock (vocals, guitar); Eric Judy (bass); Jeremiah Green (drums).

Additional personnel: Ben Blankenship (guitar, lap steel guitar, keyboards); Greg Ratajczak (guitar); Tyler Riley (violin); Brian Deck (keyboards); Ben Massarella (percussion); Chiyoko Yoshida, Tim Rutilli (background vocals).

Recorded at Clava Studio, Chicago, Illinois.

Personnel: Beverly Blankenship (guitar, lap steel guitar, banjo, keyboards); Terry Riley (violin); Brian Deck (keyboards); Jeremiah Green (drums); Ben Massarella (percussion); Chiyoko Yoshida, Tim Rutili (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Brian Deck.

Recording information: BBC Radio 1's Maida Vale Studios, London, England (07/13/1999); Clava Studio, Chicago, IL (07/13/1999); Engine Music Studios, Chicago, IL (07/13/1999); Jupiter Studio, Seattle, WA (07/13/1999).

After wowing the college and indie rock world with two lauded independent CDs, THIS IS A LONG RIDE FOR SOMEONE WITH NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT and THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST as well as many EPs, Modest Mouse signed to a major. This is often a cause for apprehension with indie favorites, but THE MOON & ANTARCTICA weathers these concerns.

While the band's lo-fi sound is a little higher-fi in this major label debut, the basic pop structures that have always tied Modest Mouse's music together are pushed more to the forefront, and the production works well. All sonic changes are slight, and the band's sardonic, slightly skewed lyrics, with their evasive take on modern life, maintain their bite. Even the poppiest tune, the breezy "Gravity Rides Everything," is fraught with tape-effects and arrhythmic percussion. The band also retains a punked-out, dissonant, discordant approach on some tracks, such as the infectious "A Different City" and the creepy "Alone Out There." THE MOON & ANTARCTICA finds Modest Mouse with its musical integrity still intact.

After wowing the college and indie rock world with two lauded independent CDs, THIS IS A LONG RIDE FOR SOMEONE WITH NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT and THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST as well as many EPs, Modest Mouse signed to a major. This is often a cause for apprehension with indie favorites, but THE MOON & ANTARCTICA weathers these concerns.

While the band's lo-fi sound is a little higher-fi in this major label debut, the basic pop structures that have always tied Modest Mouse's music together are pushed more to the forefront, and the production works well. All sonic changes are slight, and the band's sardonic, slightly skewed lyrics, with their evasive take on modern life, maintain their bite. Even the poppiest tune, the breezy "Gravity Rides Everything," is fraught with tape-effects and arrhythmic percussion. The band also retains a punked-out, dissonant, discordant approach on some tracks, such as the infectious "A Different City" and the creepy "Alone Out There." THE MOON & ANTARCTICA finds Modest Mouse with its musical integrity still intact.

Modest Mouse's Epic debut, The Moon & Antarctica, finds them strangely subdued, focusing on mortality as well as the moody, acoustic side of their music and downplaying the edgy, spastic rock that helped make them indie stars. Not that their first major-label release sounds like a sellout -- actually, the slight sheen of Brian Deck's production enhances the album's introspective tone -- but occasionally The Moon & Antarctica's melancholy becomes ponderous. Unfortunately, the album's middle stretch contains three such songs, "The Cold Part," "Alone Down There," and "The Stars Are Projectors," which tend to blur together into one 17-minute-long piece that bogs down the album's momentum. Individually, each of these songs is sweeping and haunting in its own right, but grouping them together blunts their impact. However, this trilogy does provide a sharp contrast to, as well as a bridge across, The Moon & Antarctica's more vibrant beginning and end. Though it explores death and the afterlife, The Moon & Antarctica's liveliest moments are its most effective. "3rd Planet"'s simple, ramshackle melody and strange, moving lyrics ("Your heart felt good"), the elastic guitars on "Gravity Rides Everything," and the angular, jumpy "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" and "A Different City" get the album off to a strong start, while the fresh, unaffected "Wild Packs of Family Dogs," "Paper Thin Walls," and "Lives" bring it to an atmospheric, affecting peak before "What People Are Made Of" closes the album with a climactic burst of noise. Their most cohesive collection of songs to date, The Moon & Antarctica is an impressive, if flawed, map of Modest Mouse's ambitions and fears. [The 2004 reissue has been remastered and features BBC performances of "3rd Planet," "Perfect Disguise," and "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes," as well as an instrumental version of "Custom Concern" from This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About.] ~ Heather Phares