SINCE COMING TO SEATTLE in 1995, there has been no band I've studied harder than Modest Mouse. In the course of five years, they've gone from being the younger brothers I never had to the three musicians I admire most in this world. Actually, I'm in awe: a drummer who plays brilliantly, employing equal parts fire and wind; a bassist who fills each song with the kind of sloping, meandering lines that'll haunt your daydreams; a vocalist that taught himself to make the guitar sound so singular as to be instantly recognizable from any other, while penning acrobatic lyrics that spin and turn inward on themselves before bursting forward in rushing finality. To write about such a band is a daunting task because, well, in my mind they are the best, and anything I can write or say is only a mere shadow of what Modest Mouse is and does.

That singer Isaac Brock no longer lives in Seattle is a great loss to our city--whether we realize it or not. To hear some tell it, he left us when he no longer felt welcome. Others would say he left because he saw Seattle for what it is--in his own words, a "cold, cold part of the world." Whatever the case, he's become a passing stranger who comes into town quietly and slips out like a ghost, leaving behind a beautiful sound, a tumbling twist of phrase, and an exasperating, untouchable intimacy.

Modest Mouse's 1997 release, The Lonesome Crowded West, was an album packed with emotions and characters who felt those emotions wrongly but honestly. Living in trailers and parking lots, they fought for things not worth fighting for, blindly lashing out in fits of anger and love. Brock spoke best for his woeful characters in the album's stunning "Cowboy Dan": "Every time you think you're walking you're just moving the ground/Every time you think you're talking you're just moving your mouth/Every time you think you're looking you're just looking down."

Now signed to a major label, Modest Mouse has just released The Moon and Antarctica, and while it's not as cinematic as Lonesome Crowded West, the album is a jaw-dropping collection of stories that may or may not be autobiographical--told through unforgettable lyrics and mind pictures made of that singular sound. The vibrant characters that roamed earlier Modest Mouse albums are scarce, and in their place is a sole survivor who's been to hell and back--and learned a lot about himself and the stinking world in the process. Brock sets the tone in the record's first line: "I got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over" ("3rd Planet"). Two tracks later he revisits the theme in "Dark Center of the Universe": "It took a lot of work to be the ass I am and I'm real damn sure that anyone can equally, easily fuck you over." There's a heartbreaking kiss-off to Seattle in "Perfect Disguise," which has Brock touching upon a situation that preceded his leaving: "You cocked your head to shoot me down and I don't give a damn about you or this town no more/Now that I know the score." What follows is a cascading collage of hard lessons and dead-eye visions, at times fitful and at other times flowing. Guitars jag harshly, out of nowhere, only moments after violins swayed under a softly repeated line. Songs bleed into one another, and it's hard to know when one has finished and another has started unless you're watching the track counter. Hope and despair are in constant battle: "It's hard to remember we're alive for the first time/It's hard to remember we're alive for the last time" ("Lives"); "If I had a nickel for every dime/I'd have half the time" ("Lives" again); "Laugh hard/It's a long way to the bank ("Paper Thin Walls").

Lushly produced and intricately layered, The Moon and Antarctica truly is Modest Mouse's best album to date, and to see it performed live is incredible. I caught them earlier this month playing to a sold-out all-ages crowd, and if there's one thing that Brock lavishes attention on, it's his audience. In person he's somewhat of a phantom, always distracted and slipping away, leaving you aching for more contact. But to the audience, he plays intimately and passionately, giving them his undivided attention. Fans are awarded the trust he seems to find so elusive in this "life like weeds."