Some bands mellow with age. Modest Mouse just keep finding new ways to rattle. On July 3, 2026, Isaac Brock and company brought their jittery, restless catalogue to the ornate Orpheum Theatre for their only British Columbia date of the tour and the first Canadian stop on the road behind An Eraser and a Maze, their first new album in five years. The plush seats of the Orpheum are a funny fit for a band this twitchy, and for long stretches nobody stayed in them.
Portland psych outfit Sun Atoms warmed the room, but the night belonged to the churn and yelp of Modest Mouse at full tilt. They opened with the frantic clatter of “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshines” and never really let the tension settle, tearing through “Doin’ the Cockroach” and the loping sway of “The Stars Are Projectors” with the wired energy that has kept this band vital for three decades.
Brock remains one of indie rock’s great live wires — part carnival barker, part frayed nerve — and his voice still cracks and howls in all the right places. “Dark Center of the Universe” and “Bukowski” landed with a weathered wisdom, while the new material from An Eraser and a Maze slotted in without a seam, proof the band’s restless streak has not dulled a bit. “Bankrupt on Selling” gave the room a rare moment of hush before the chaos resumed.
The back half tilted toward catharsis. “Dashboard” pulled the loudest singalong of the night, “Lampshades on Fire” bounced the balcony, and the serrated stomp of “Bury Me With It” felt like the whole theatre exhaling at once. Even deep cuts like “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box” and “Satin in a Coffin” hit with surprising force, the band’s twin drummers and stacked guitars filling every corner of the historic room.
They closed the way only Modest Mouse can — somewhere between a nervous breakdown and a celebration — bringing the night home with the churning “Heart Cooks Brain.” For a band more than thirty years into a career that has never once followed a straight line, it was a reminder of how thrilling that unpredictability still is in a room this size.
