Why it Took Isaac Brock 20 Years to Write Modest Mouse’s New Single

Modest Mouse releases their latestrecord, Strangers to Ourselves,on March 17th. It’s their first in eight years— and while that might feel like a long time, one of the singles fromthe album, “The Best Room,” is actually almost twenty years in the making.

Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock tells Kurt Andersen, “that story started in 1996 or 1997 on my way to master [The Lonesome Crowded West].” Brock was flying from Montana to Arizonaat the time. “Are you familiar with The Phoenix Lights? It’s the most widely reported and noted UFO sighting ever,” Brock asks. “I was in a plane in a holding pattern while that was going on.” Brock didn’t tell a soul, except for his mother and his late friend Chris Takino, whose label Up Records launched Modest Mouse’s career.

Of course, if you listen to “The Best Room,” you won’t hear about UFOs or inexplicable lights in the Arizona sky. “That was just the landing,” he explains. What you will recognize in the song is the crummy hotel — complete with police tape—Brockchecked into on a whim after landing in Phoenix withnogame plan.

The best room they have
Is the last room you want
The bathroom’s outside
Police tape is tied
To the doorknobs for rooms
Nine through thirty-two
These Western concerns
We beg while we chew

It took Brockquite a long timeto turn that experience into asong. He tells Kurt, “Some things are poignant, but maybe the reason they’re poignant doesn’t become clear for almost two decades.”

Listen to a bit oftheir conversation above— we’ll broadcast more in thisweek’s show.You can listen to “The Best Room” below.Strangers to Ourselves is out March 17th.