Modest Mouse Hardcover – September 17, 2014

Having enjoyed Pat Graham's work visually chronicling Modest Mouse on both the photoblog and the tour zines days, I was really excited to find out that he had released this work. This hardcover book sequentially follows the band from their very first tour, charting their steady rise from humble beginnings, small shows, and constantly broken down vans, up to their latter days as festival headlining staples.Pat has a clear eye for striking compositions, and you can see in his photos how traversing the American landscape must have served as an inspiration and muse, just as you can hear it in Isaac's lyrics and find it in the band's music. In fact, the travel and distance in between the shows is really the thematic center of the book, with artfully arranged landscapes, anecdotes, live performances, and candid shots of the band sprawling over the welcomingly numerous pages. As a close friend, Pat's shots achieve an honesty and intimate familiarity with the band, something that Isaac speaks to in the forward, and the personal words from both Pat and the band are a really nice addition--Johnny Marr's quotation on the back of the book is simply tremendous.For me, this book brings back some of the best memories of my own roadtrips with friends and loved ones to see the band play over the years, as we watched them evolve over a decade from a 3-piece just before The Moon & Antarctica, into the expanded presentation the band evinces to this day (we miss you Eric Judy).I would highly recommend this book to any fan as the definitive visual accompaniment to (in my opinion) one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

This book is an awesome trip back through the early days of MM up to the Johnny Marr days. The pictures are ordered by year. I love flipping through these pages and finding shots of the band in various venues, especially the small 'harder edge' venues.Through Pat's photographic lens, we can glimpse empty landscapes with twisty bits of things blowing through as in a window of a train. Strip malls and parking lots, monuments and steeples, empty fields and dark forests scroll by in a purgatorial loop. The urban paranoia of post-punk seeps into wide-open rural, looming industrial and encroaching suburban vistas, all alike in their sinister, hypnotic repetition.It's clear that Pat Graham has an undeniable artistry to his shots. Depicted photos range from gritty 'pre-early' MM playing in a local park band-shell to a small gathering of beer drinking, bike riding, skate boarding types (aka 'my peeps'), to the larger venues of MM's more mainstream popularity.For myself, I'm intensely attracted to the old photos - the one of Isaac laying down a jam with a pair of vice grips stuck to his fret board is a highlight. Outside of all the band pics are plenty of awesome shots of the guys traveling through incredible, blissfully rough and empty scenery, including many (many!) shots of the snow blown wastelands that make up the spaces between populations in our lonesome crowded west.After reading through the stories from the road and all the issues (and subsequent pictures) around their broke-down transportation, I was left feeling even more in touch with the band that defined my generation of lonesome, isolationist, mall-fucked, post punk, nobody nothing fuck-ups (thanks Dug!)

I pre-ordered mine when it was first announced ages ago. Received it this morning and sat down with it right away. It took me from Dramamine to Tundra/Desert (Tracks 1-11 on their debut LP) to finish and I'll be sharing it with my girlfriend when we have a chance.It's much thicker than I'd imagined (that's what she said, hur). Pat Graham's photography is wonderfully arranged and a delight to explore. The small anecdotes, stories, and quotes are well-placed and very interesting. Pat's artistic vision shines through with gusto and, as Isaac is quoted in the Introduction, it was their "dumb luck that he is such a great photographer".As a younger fan, I've always been supremely disappointed that I wasn't able to experience their early shows, but this book, I feel, adequately captures that tone (though the book does encompass the Johnny Marr era as well). If you don't have one already, I'd highly recommend it to any fan of the band.

I bought this for my boyfriends birthday as he is big into Modest Mouse and collecting their stuff. We cracked it open to take a peak and ended up slowly flipping through the entire book. There are really sweet pictures from the 90s where everyone's in crappy vehicles/motels/venues mixed with a lot of out-the-window shots across the country, some a tiny corner of a page and others sprawling over two pages. There's also pretty interesting backstory given to some photos, though I wish more. Highly recommended making the purchase.

This is the third book by Pat Graham. Pat's description of the frozen cow in the road brought the realism of being in a band touring the Midwest in the Winter.Pat's book has a sound track that a person can hear if they listen-music-people's voices-the sounds of the road and the photographs are parts of the sound track. A person may feel the energy of the concerts-the power of the photos-the fun of the tour.Join Modest Mouse for the book tour, meet the band, and see the world through the lens of photographer Pat Graham.Bill Graham

I'm not back into visual art, or photography, I'm just a dude that really digs Modest Mouse - their sound, lyrics, and vibe. This book definitely makes me think about learning more about photography. The imagery gives you a glimpse in the life of a bunch of broke dudes with big ideas going on a tour, which is great because their earlier stuff has a lot of references to travel and geography.

What an intense book. A modest mouse fan. Isaac brock fan. Or any one stuck in the 90s somewhere in there head could look this over a million times

Any big Modest Mouse fan will love the book. No doubt about that. Pat's pictures are fantastic and properly paint the portrait of a huge segment of time surrounding the band and Issac.Thoroughly enjoyed it. But I'll admit after looking through it twice, it got put on a shelf. Guess I was hoping for a few more stories behind the pictures. I'm sure there were some wild times as the photos indicate, just would have loved some more writing and context behind the shots.

Love Modest Mouse and this book is fantastic, the photos are beautiful and its great to see images from when the band was starting out