The Moon & Antarctica (2000)

The Moon & Antarctica is the third studio album by American rock band Modest Mouse, released on June 13, 2000, by Epic Records.

The Moon & Antarctica peaked at number 120 on the US Billboard 200, and received acclaim from critics, who praised its subject matter and change in sound from earlier albums and frontman Isaac Brock's introspective lyrics. It was also hailed for being an expansion of the band's sound, much due to their new major label budget as well as the production of Brian Deck. In 2021, NME referred to it as "one of the greatest records ever made".

Background and recording

The album was the band's first released by a major record label, being issued on Epic Records.

The album was produced by Brian Deck, who first met the band at a concert in Detroit. "We ended up on a bill together at The Magic Stick in Detroit, and we got along really well, we hung out till the end of the night—and maybe consumed a fair amount of beer together" says Deck. Deck and Brock fell out of touch shortly thereafter, but reconnected a few years later, when Brock invited Califone (which included several members of Deck's band Red Red Meat) to hit the road as Modest Mouse's opening act.

The album was the first project to be recorded in Clava Studios in Chicago. When Modest Mouse band members arrived for the recording, the studio was not completely finished. Though Deck was mostly producing under Perishable Records at the time, and the studio was built mostly for Perishable projects, Deck had no problems producing under Epic Records. Despite being under a major label the band "remains largely self-managed and still drive themselves across the country on tour", and Brock was fairly involved in the mixing process. Deck said of Brock's involvement that, "By the end of making the record, he was able to mastermind some cool maneuvers with plug-ins and Pro Tools. It wasn't so much that he was mixing, but he could look at a song, understand the musical event that he wanted to make happen, understand the tools at his disposal, relate it in a way that I could understand, and make it happen pretty quickly."

In the middle of recording, Brock was attacked and had his jaw broken by a group of ruffians hanging out at a park across the street from where the band were staying in Chicago. "It laid him up in the hospital for a week," Deck says. "Then his jaw was wired shut for two or three months."

The recording for the album took 5 months, beginning in July 1999 and running until November 1999.

Music and lyrics

Despite the fans' common concern that the switch to a major record label would change the band's unique sound, Isaac Brock assured fans that this would not be the case, "I don't think the new album is at all overpolished or anything. We spent more time getting crazy sounds than making things sound polished." AllMusic described the album's sound as "strangely subdued". The album's mood has been described as "melancholy", and its textures have been called "atmospheric" and "angular". Lyrical themes explored on the album include death and the afterlife.

Reception

The Moon & Antarctica was released to acclaim from music critics. Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, reported an average score of 82 based on 22 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Stephen Thompson of The A.V. Club felt that The Moon & Antarctica was the band's "weirdest record yet" and would downplay worries that Modest Mouse's move to a major label "would smooth out the edges of the group's brash, jerky sound", calling it a "sort of concept album about cold and distant places" held together by "a strange sort of precision, lending lurching power to the strongest material." Nick Catucci of The Village Voice noted the album's more streamlined production, in contrast to the lo-fi quality of their previous work, and complimented the fact that "the studio scrubbing leaves no noticeable film; even the effects—like the spacey guitar that launches 'Gravity Rides Everything'—ring true." Heather Phares of AllMusic felt that the production enhanced the album's introspective tone and called the album "their most cohesive collection of songs to date" and "an impressive, if flawed, map of Modest Mouse's ambitions and fears." Melody Maker praised The Moon & Antarctica as being "beyond anything else they've ever achieved".