SEATTLE — It was one of those Showbox nights when the excitement spills out onto the streets, practically radiating from the marquee's glow. Hometown fans wrapped around the block across from Pike Place Market as Modest Mouse was set to begin a three-night stand performing their seminal album "The Lonesome Crowded West" days before Thanksgiving.
The Issaquah-formed indie rock giants had burned through the same beloved songs in the same beloved room roughly a year earlier for a one-off charity event. But last fall was different. The band sounded fiercer and tour-mode tightened in front of a more dedicated crowd that included plenty of friends and family, including Phil Ek, who helped produce the Seattle classic 25 years ago.
"Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" and "Doin' the Cockroach" cut like a knife fight while frontman Isaac Brock barked and spat his narrative bus bench poetry through splintering guitars. Jeremiah Green's buoyant percussions — that frequently lift and propel Modest Mouse songs in unorthodox ways — bounced the sold-out crowd like a tattered basketball on the Showbox's famously springy floor.
