Dear Johnny,

Well I finally went out and got my own copy of "The Lonesome Crowded West." I think I've played it over 100 times before you even moved away and we broke up. The only problem is that when I listen to "Trailer Trash," I still see you in a cement-brick walled apartment you could barely afford lifting weights with your brown eyes half-closed to take a break from Grand Theft Auto and doing a wicked Isaac Brock imitation causing my heart to splinter. Eating snowflakes with plastic forks/and a paper plate of course/you think of everything.

I kept thinking incessant playing of Modest Mouse has something to do with my losing you, however, I'm beginning to believe that this record is simply the perfect post-punk release of the nineties. Emo references aside (for I know little), if this were vinyl, I would have worn out the grooves by now. But this disc, recorded in 1997 and pretty much ignored by the mainstream press, is god.

Covering the post-modern American experience of alcoholism, consumerism, agnosticism and travel I can safely say after repeatedly brainwashing myself with this song that "Out of Gas" is a mantra of great debt (I kid) with the echo of words I can still hear you singing from the bathtub as I pour coffee in your kitchen into chipped green mugs. Out of gas/Out of road/out of car/I don't how I'm gonna go/I had a drink just the other day/opinions were like kittens/i was giving em away.

"Cowboy Dan" is my favorite ballad. With a slow, deliberate picky pacing, the song builds and Isaac croaks, Goes to the desert/fires his rifle in the sky/and yells "God if I have to die/you will have to die." But the great thing about this song is the way it slows pace and morphs into objective psysiological statements and then a celebration of numb meaninglessness. Everytime you think you're talking/You're just moving your mouth.

I have sung the chorus to "Polar Opposites" at the top of my lungs countless times. Although it's an ode to alcoholism and clinical depression, it's very moving and in my opinion somewhat of a blues song in disguise.

I hear a bit of the Pixies, but I think it's an unfair comparison because these guys are more complex and bit more country-influenced than surf-rock tinged. I think at times that Isaac soundes like Perry Farrell too, but really they are an original. Nothing sounds like this. Nothing flows like this. Nothing feels like this. The record goes hardcore ("Shit Luck") then gets a bit popier with a dash of scratch ("Heart Cooks Brain") and then we get the quintessential road song ("Truckers Atlas") and the mini-opus "Teeth Like God's Shoesine" and the whole thing weaves around in a swirl of guitars that get chunky and then drop to a snails pace.

So thanks for being in my life for three months. If I didn't know you, I wouldn't have gotten into this band. Or Grand Theft Auto.

love,

Jane