Cult band Modest Mouse team up with UK post-punk superstar

Isaac Brock doesn't like interviews. It's not that he comes across as overtly rude or deliberately evasive (although both are not unknown) but, as we sit in the bright spring sunshine outside the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, the Modest Mouse singer's discomfort with journalistic examination is written plainly across his face and exacerbated by his pronounced lisp. While fielding a round of not-so-searching introductory questions, Brock restlessly lights up a stream of cigarettes, slugs two bottles of beer at a quite frankly alarming speed, and does all he can to avoid eye contact with his interviewer. Just then, a suave Mancunian by the name of Johnny Marr interjects from a distance. "What's your favourite Smiths song?" he smirks, aiming the question at Brock, in the style of his own mock interview.

"'Just Like Heaven'," comes the glib reply and they both let out a hearty round of laughter that immediately seems to put the frontman at ease. It's indicative of the strong personal rapport that the pair have built up in the time since Marr was announced as a fully-fledged band-member midway through 2006. On paper, it seemed an unlikely combination to have the stalwarts of the America's underground music, who had barely got their feet wet in the mainstream, teaming up with a firmly established guitar god who had helped create a cornerstone of modern English pop-culture by the age of 21.

When it comes to the latter, Brock happily pleads ignorance. "Someone asked me the other day what my favourite Smiths album was for real, and I said The Best of the Smiths," he laughs, fully aware of his declaration of philistinism. "When I was a kid, a lot of my friends were huge fans but I had a hard time enduring the Morrissey personality. But I was always into Johnny's guitar parts and became very familiar with them." It was this seed of early appreciation that grew into the singer deciding to put in a cold call, inviting Marr to the band's base-camp in Portland, Oregon for what the former Smith remembers was initially mooted as an experimental and ultimately brief collaboration.

"I went into it thinking it would be 10 days of me making music with five other people in Portland - that was all the expectation I had. But it seemed like what we were doing was so strong that joining the band for real seemed obvious - I didn't want to be some sort of session musician or superstar friend. In private, I was also keen to make a commitment to them as people because they've been very welcoming and very fair to me as a person."

While Marr admits to relishing the prospect of a long-term obligation, he is also keen to stress that joining forces with Modest Mouse is neither a way for him to score a steady gig for the next 18 months, nor a way for the band to infiltrate Britain, where they remain a largely peripheral pleasure.

"It had nothing to do with a bunch of people sitting around a round table with contracts and pie-charts, discussing some smart career-move. The way we got together reminded me of how you get a band together when you're 16 or 17; you see if you all get along, try to make some songs up, and if you like it, you come back and do it all over again. It was a more organic process than anyone could imagine."

On a visual plain at least, there is a certain disparity between the two. Marr still has a hint of the rock star to him. He sports designer shades, sharp-cut jeans, and has the aura of a man who is confident enough to know the worth of what he has created, but is humble, too. Brock, on the other hand, seems awkward, nervy, ill at ease with praise from his fans (certainly the ones who approach him during this interview) and rarely seen wearing anything other than distressed, plaid, shirts.

But the musical compliments they pay each other are numerous, and the organic nature of Marr's integration is apparent on the new Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank - their fifth fully-fledged effort. In among the kaleidoscope of jerky guitar riffs, alluringly unpredictable rhythms, the healthy quota of mariachi trumpets and an opaque lyrical preoccupation with nautical themes, the temptation is to cock an ear for hints of Marr's jangly dynamism or an unfathomable moment of technical trailblazing. But the shadow of his history does not engulf Modest Mouse; it merely serves to enrich them and, where there was once scope for comparisons to such American luminaries as Mercury Rev, Pavement, The Flaming Lips and even Tom Waits, the sextet are now forging an increasingly special identity among their contemporaries in alternative rock.

Just as importantly, Marr's addition has provided Brock with a close ally - the kind who, seemingly evidently, can lighten his mood just by being in the vicinity.

"He fitted in really well but what I didn't expect to happen is for us to become such good friends so quickly," says Brock. "Johnny's a real gentleman and, after these two pretty intense years we've had making this album, I think that I value his friendship more than his contribution to the band."

At this moment, Modest Mouse are just a step away from outright stardom in their homeland. Upon its release, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank entered the Billboard chart at No1, the band made the cover of the esteemed music publication Spin and were even covered by contestants competing on American Idol - much to the continued consternation of militant Modest Mouse bloggers and message-boarders.

It's a far cry from the project Brock first began in Issaquah, Washington, back in 1993. Cribbing their name from a Virginia Woolf story, he formed the band with the drummer Jeremiah Green and the bassist Eric Judy (both remain with the band today) and the trio held their first practices in a makeshift shed next to Brock's mother's trailer, which then doubled as his home. It wasn't until 1996 that their first album proper emerged - a shambolic but strangely intricate set of lo-fi oddities collected under the wry title of This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About.

As a firm cult fanbase gradually began to develop around Modest Mouse, so did the major-label interest, which led to them signing a deal with Sony in time for the release of 2000's widely celebrated The Moon and Antarctica. That critical acclaim was finally matched by some long overdue commercial success four years later when the band returned from a lengthy lay-off with Good News for People Who Love Bad News, their most accessible effort yet and one that spawned the breakthrough single "Float On".

However, the steady, incremental growth of the band was certainly not reflected in any part of Brock's personal life. Having previously endured a the death of some close friends, a false date-rape accusation and the deterioration of Green's mental health (which forced Green to leave the band between 2003 and 2004), Brock then found himself serving a period of 10 days in prison in relation to a charge of attempted murder. The charge developed after Brock was involved in a "driving under the influence" accident that resulted in a passenger sustaining a thumb injury which, under Oregon state laws, was considered attempted murder.

The singer also found time to maintain a sizeable drug-habit as Modest Mouse began to make an international impact off the back of "Float On".

"I did so many different kinds of drugs, but the one that really got me was cocaine," he remembers in a rare moment of candour. "I'm pretty sure it made me an untrustworthy scumbag but what would be just as bad was the comedown. After three days of coke bingeing or doing crack, the edgy, teeth-grinding phase would set it and I would drink whatever I could to keep my mood on a plateau - even Listerine." At the time, he freely admitted to heavy drug-use in a number of interviews, while bullishly claiming that his habits had only the bare minimum of impact on his creativity and personal relationships. But now, hindsight is turning out to be Brock's main detox tool.

"I was in a pretty good state of denial of the seriousness of the problem I had. The drugs definitely had me rather than the other way around. My fiancée was a real hard-ass on me about that and I started to reduce my intake just so I wouldn't get in trouble or get yelled at anymore. It's only recently that I've begun to thank her for that."

Modest Mouse put in a staggeringly accomplished live performance later in the evening. Their ramshackle roots are but a distant memory as the six-piece stride through a toweringly impressive 90-minute set which underlines the fact that, while Marr might be the rock-star in the equation, it is still quite clearly Brock's band at heart. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the crowd's passionate recitals of the frontman's lyrics - a facet of Modest Mouse that has long been regarded as one of their prime assets. Marr, for one, counts himself as a devotee. "Before I joined, I appreciated them as a band partly because they didn't sound like X or Y and that's very rare these days. I found them to be unfathomable but now that I'm in the band, I've begun to see the depth in Isaac's lyrics a lot more too. There's something he can do that no one else can. I'm a real fan of his writing - the twists and turns, the wealth of ideas, the surreal aspect and definitely the comedy. Isaac's got a good sense of the absurd that he doesn't get credited for very much. I'm really impressed with what Isaac's done on this record particularly - he's really upped the ante for himself. Intellectually, he's a firework but he also knows that the stage is for doing something on rather than just standing there and not getting the chords wrong. It's good to make the gig a genuine performance event and make it different every night."

Such a modus operandi can be related to a gig the band played in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, back in March when Brock's desire to entertain manifested itself into a much-publicised incident of drunken self-mutilation. After hitting himself in the face with a microphone, the singer then proceeded to slice his chest open before a roadie leapt on stage to intervene.

"I just got festive that night," recounts Brock with an eerie jocularity. "I lost my voice and I drank a load of coffee with Scotch in it so I was pretty hyper but I was in a good mood. It was deliberate but it was superficial - the cuts looked like cat-scratches - and it healed up in two days. Thin blood from the alcohol made it bleed a hell of a lot more. It wasn't a cry for help or the sign of someone having a meltdown."

Marr also offers little more than a shrug of the shoulders when asked about the events of that night ("I think he was just bored"), but all accounts of indicate that, while Brock is enjoying a relatively sober period and revelling in the company of a new best friend, his erratic streak hasn't been entirely removed. Furthermore, the sight of him thrashing around on the Electric Factory stage and barking the words to his songs like a feral lumberjack epitomises how Brock's wilful disposition continues to propel Modest Mouse, ensuring that they remain one of America's most intriguing bands.

Modest Mouse tour the UK from 20 to 29 May (www.modestmousemusic.com)