Consumer Guide Album

Modest Mouse: This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About [Up, 1996]
Long-winded young wankers so insularly indie they're incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been softened up by Wowee Zowee and the Meat Puppets, these young Northwesterners have nevertheless stumbled into their own sound. It's tuneful, so what; it's halting, even worse; it's funny, now we're getting somewhere; it's direct albeit arch, ahh youth; it's harmonically quirky, there's the nub. The nicest thing I can say about it is that in a just educational system it would earn them all music scholarships. The worst thing I can say about it is the same thing. A-