Eight years, departing band members, cancelled tours and unused collaborations with Big Boi and ex-Nirvana star Krist Novoselic have given Modest Mouse’s latest release, entitled ‘Strangers To Ourselves’, something of a ‘Chinese Democracy’ bent to it. With the Washington State indie act often touted as something of a genre founder, the album also faced a complex challenge: how were Modest Mouse to remain themselves, but also shrug off the threat of becoming derivative of the many ‘indie’ rock acts that followed?

The answer, it seems, eluded vocalist Isaac Brock and his fluid group for some time: they’ve been busy with heavy touring schedules, re-releasing old albums and trialling enough songs to fill their sixth studio album four times over. The result – which flits through swooning beats, the most offbeat and evocative of lyrics and even a touch of unlikely hip-hop – is all that we could have hoped for, avoiding that ‘overthought’ feel. It even comes with a promise from Brock that the next album will follow “as soon as legally possible.”

Brock is quite open about the difficulties with ‘Strangers to Ourselves, but also points to a period in which Modest Mouse have been far from quiet. “This is a culmination of eight years of work in a way”, he agrees, “but then again there’s probably a good three to four years there where we were either touring or recuperating from touring. It’s eclectic, because eclectic is kind of what we do. It might not be perfect but it’s there, you know, it allows us to keep the band moving along. It’s pretty different from ‘We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank’.”

A lot happens in eight years, from fresh influences to changes in the music scene, but it seems to be internal pressure that drives the changes found on this latest release. “There’s a bit of pressure to be something different to what you were a few years ago. It definitely pops into our heads every so often, to ‘steer clear of that thing',” Brock explains. “I’m not positive it’s possible to stop sounding like yourself, but it’s definitely at the back of your mind, the need to evolve. When I started playing some of the stuff it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t that good. So I just had to find a way of getting there. I try not to ever sound like any old stuff, but it’s going to happen sometimes.”

Part of that journey to new pastures – to exploring musical avenues and refining new sounds – came in the highly publicised studio collaborations. Not that they were supposed to be public. “It shouldn’t ever have gotten out that we were working with Big Boi in the first place”, Brock tells us. “When we worked with Big Boi we had enough stuff under our belts that it felt like a good idea to try something on and see, to take a detour in the process and see where we were. There was a sound bouncing around my head and I decided to reach out. But we were ill prepared. We had such a blast and we recorded a couple of songs, but just different versions of tracks that ended up on the record. We were running our guitars through two way amp simulators and stuff like that. It didn’t sound quite right. We had a great time though. He’s a badass man. By the time we got around to recording the record, my plans had shifted, as they did five or six times throughout recording. I’m a fickle, fickle man!”

The most unlikely outcome is a track entitled ‘Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)’, which Brock says “just kind of happened.” It’s out of character in the album, a hip-hop influenced mish-mash that’s slightly reminiscent of ‘Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes’ from way back in 2000, but generally sounds like a wonderfully disparate, clunky mess of a track that hits the target simply by being so weirdly unlike even this eclectic outfit.