Out of Gas

Running out of gas on the highway is the Modest Mouse condition. The specific indignity of the car that won't go, the road that continues without you — Brock has returned to this imagery repeatedly because it captures something about American experience that is both literal and metaphorical.

Out of Gas is deceptively simple: guitar and voice, the arrangement sparse, the lyric specific in a way that makes the universal feeling credible. It is one of the best quiet songs on an album that rewards its quiet moments.

The recurring presence of Modest Mouse across the One Curious World archive is its own curatorial statement: some catalogs contain more truth than can be heard in a single pass.