Modest Mouse Has Dynamic Spirit

The indie-rock world’s latest success story, Modest Mouse has risen from the Seattle suburbs and won sweeping accolades for its prickly, intimate and sprawling 1997 album, “The Lonesome Crowded West.” Playing Thursday at the Hollywood Athletic Club, the band that recently snagged the No. 4 spot in Spin magazine’s “10 to Watch” annual alternative-music roundup revealed why it is considered a hot young contender.

The set also underscored why Modest Mouse is an unusual but interesting choice for airplay on KROQ-FM (106.7), which has recently started spinning its Pavement-like song, “Polar Opposites.”

After all, singer-guitarist Isaac Brock, an intense 23-year-old with truck-stop sideburns, dug into an unruly mix of Built to Spill-like melodic jams and intense upstart rock. Hinting of the Pixies, yet far from poppy, the band dipped into unwieldy yet beautiful guitar digressions and spiky post-punk.

Fighting an unforgiving sound system, Brock sang about humanity overload in “Doin’ the Cockroach” and a road trip in “Truckers Atlas,” a song with such subtle, evocative lines as “And the writing in the stall said, ‘We write our maps in the stalls.’ ”

Though the style is familiar, this is not exactly the obtuse stuff that you generally hear on radio these days. Indeed, there is something in the dynamic chemistry between Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green and bassist Eric Judy, and the urgency and depth of Brock’s lyrics, that makes Modest Mouse’s a voice that begs for--and deserves--attention.