Pitchfork: Mark Kozelek Talks Modest Mouse

Mark Kozelek loves him some Modest Mouse. He loves 'em so much he went and recorded a whole album of their songs. It's called Tiny Cities and it's coming out on the Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon mastermind's own label, Caldo Verde, on November 1. But you knew that already, because we told you about it a month ago.

What you didn't know was the story behind the story. Kozelek stumbled upon Modest Mouse by accident a few years ago. "I actually went to see the Shins when they were opening for Modest Mouse," he told Pitchfork last week. "It was like Godzilla stepped on Bambi or something when Modest Mouse came out. It was just amazing. You know, I'm not too often blown away by anything."

He said that he was impressed with the band's dynamic, and it reminded him of his former group, Red House Painters, with their tight on-stage chemistry. But he was particularly taken with Issac Brock's "presence." "An average song has fifty words and this guy had like a thousand. There's a lot going on there. He was just really loose and just sort of let it out. I think as an artist, you sense when something is going on that's real. It's like the guy was possessed or something."

Slowly, the Mouse began to seep into his life. "Sun Kil Moon was doing some tours, and just for fun we added 'Dramamine' and 'Never Ending Math Equation' into the set. We just kind of improvised it." But as he grew to master the songs, he became attached to the idea of treating Modest Mouse with the same full-disc coverage he'd given AC/DC on 2001's What's Next to the Moon.

"It's just like a kid in a candy store with his lyrics," he said. The lyrics are just so colorful. It was incredibly easy to make the record." Kozelek financed the recording himself, working casually and on the sly. "I didn't really talk about it while I was making the record, in case I didn't want to release it, I didn't want anybody hassling me about it. So I just kind of kept it a secret and when it was done I sequenced it and I thought, 'this is good,' and I played it for a few people and they were like 'this is great.'"

Modest Mouse fans might be a bit surprised by Tiny Cities, however. Every song has been thoroughly Kozelek-ized. When asked about changing the tracks' distinctive melodies, he replied, "That's what I do. I've done it since the very first cover I ever did, 'The Star Spangled Banner' [on 1993's Red House Painters II]. When I cover songs, I think very much outside of the box. I just saw Thumbsucker the other day, and Elliott Smith was doing a Cat Stevens song exactly like Cat Stevens, and it was incredibly boring. I get into the guts of a song and completely twist things up and turn it around and make it my own."

In other words, Kozelek has turned Isaac Brock's twisted millennial meanderings into his trademark brand of pastoral melancholy. "If you listen to a song like "Exit Does Not Exist", those words are coming out like an automatic weapon," he said. "It's really, really fast. It's beautiful, but it's something that, if you're not into Modest Mouse, it's just going to go right by. I've slowed them down, and there's enough space in there that you can really hear what's going on. It becomes my own colors, you know?"

Hear your own colors in this here tracklist:

01 Exit Does Not Exist
02 Tiny Cities Made of Ashes
03 Neverending Math Equation
04 Space Travel Is Boring
05 Dramamine
06 Jesus Christ Was an Only Child
07 Four Fingered Fisherman
08 Grey Ice Water
09 Convenient Parking
10 Trucker's Atlas
11 Ocean Breathes Salty

As for Kozelek's plans after the record comes out... well, he doesn't have any. "I'm really true to my instincts and you just don't know from day to day what's going to happen. That's the nice thing about art. It's just so wide open. You don't really know what's going to happen."

The only thing that's definitely going to happen is Kozelek's solo gig at Conway Hall in London on November 25, at which he'll be playing Red House Painters songs in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his former record label, 4AD. "Maybe when the snow melts I'll get out in the spring as something to do. A few more acoustic shows or something. I think it's possible I might put a band together for a half a dozen shows."

Since we live in a world where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems, let's speculate on future Kozelek covers projects while we wait for him to make some concrete decisions. How about Real Love: Mark Kozelek Takes on Mary J. Blige? Or Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me: Mark Kozelek Sings the Best of the Presidents of the United States of America?

href="http://pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-09/08.shtml#kozelek">Mark Kozelek Records Modest Mouse Covers Album