This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About by Modest Mouse

This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, Modest Mouse's first full album, rolled out on Up Records on April 16, 1996, and it plays like a tank of gas burned on back roads going nowhere in particular. Isaac Brock sings and plays guitar, Eric Judy holds down the bass, Jeremiah Green drums, and Dann Gallucci was in the fold by then too, in a band out of Issaquah, Washington that had been at it since 1993.

The record lurches between slow, sulking crawls and guitars thrashed half to death, with punk, grunge, emo and even a little surf rock bleeding in, plus mandolin, slide guitar and cello around the edges. Brock's lyrics spill out like free association, circling cars, highways and the loneliness of life out in the sticks. Pitchfork heard the Pixies and Jane's Addiction in it, and "Dramamine" drifts along in a queasy haze. The Lonesome Crowded West came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.