Here's something interesting that turned up today. For those of you that can remember, back in January 2008, in an interview from Rolling Stone Magazine, Isaac mentioned that he was working on a project with Frank Black to recreate Lee Hazlewood's Trouble Is A Lonesome Town.

That was the last we heard of it.

The project now however, is ready for release. It looks like the project's main originator was Charles Normal, known for his work with Frank Black, Pete Yorn, Jetboy, and his brother, musician Larry Norman.

Charles Normal first heard the Hazlewood album in 2000 while living in Norway, where he picked it up in a secondhand show.

"It really made me start thinking about America, where I hadn't been to in quite some time," Normal said. "I'm a big fan of 'The Andy Griffith Show,' and that small-town Americana we grew up watching on TV and this was like the audio companion to that. It had kind of a sinister vibe, it was a little darker."

The project really got underway when he read in 2007 that Hazlewood had always intended the album to be seen as a set of demos, that would later be recorded by other artists. He recruited friends and collaborators from Portland, to begin work on the album including Isaac Brock, The Pixies' Frank Black, Pete Yorn, and members of Art Brut and the Dandy Warhols.

The project however would be shelved shortly after it Isaac gave that interview in 2008 though, after Charles Normal's brother Larry passed away.

"I just put the whole thing on the back burner," Normal says. "It was really heart-wrenching to try to sing harmonies with him; these were the last tracks that he'd ever recorded."

Eventually, after some long late night talks with Isaac, Charles decided to complete the album. Which will be released under the band name "Thriftstore Masterpiece" and will be available on July 9.

Thriftstore Masterpiece revisit Lee Hazlewood's 1963 lost classic Trouble Is A Lonesome Town and features Pete Yorn, Frank Black (Pixies), Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse), Courtney Taylor-Taylor (The Dandy Warhols), Eddie Argos (Art Brut), the late Larry Norman and more.

The album is available for order, currently in a pressing of 1000 copies on a brown and white starburst LP from Side One Dummy Records. The full track listing is as follows:

1. Long Black Train - featuring Frank Black
2. Ugly Brown - featuring Larry Norman
3. Son Of A Gun - featuring Frank Black
4. We All Make The Flowers Grow - featuring Kristin Blix
5. Run Boy Run - featuring Frank Black
6. Six Feet Of Chain - featuring Pete Yorn
7. The Railroad - featuring Isaac Brock
8. Look At That Woman - featuring Courtey Taylor-Taylor
9. Peculiar Guy - featuring Eddie Argos
10. Trouble Is A Lonesome Town - featuring Larry Norman

Right now, we are not sure exactly what tracks will feature Isaac apart from The Railroad, but we'll keep you posted as we find out. Listen to that track below.

Thanks to jplan74 and Schuno for sending this in.

Source: Thriftstore Masterpiece: Pete Yorn, members of the Pixies and Modest Mouse Cover Lee Hazlewood's Trouble Is a Lonesome Town - Speakeasy - WSJ

Modest Mouse performed the second stop of their short North American tour at the Coachella festival.

Marking it's second appearance in concert, was new track Be Brave and thanks to an earlier campaign to get the festival organizers to stream the festival, a higher quality version of the track has been recorded by Twitter user mylasdiralen. Catch the recording over on their website.

Source: Here's to Now: I recorded the new Modest Mouse song "Be Brave"...

While it originally looked like Modest Mouse set was not going to be included in the list of acts Coachella would be streaming tonight, an 11th hour campaign organized by board member jplan74 seems to have changed the festival organizers minds.

Modest Mouse's set tonight will be streamed, just not live. The band's set will be shown on Channel 2 of the Coachella YouTube stream at 9pm Pacific Time tonight.

Thanks to all that helped out.

Source: coachella - YouTube

Modest Mouse performed their first show for 2013 in Oakland, California two nights ago. In case you missed the set list when we posted it that night, it was reported that two new songs were performed.

The titles for these two tracks have now been confirmed as Be Brave and Shit In Your Cut. Rough video of both songs has also made it's way onto YouTube and posted below. Interestingly, no other "new" material from the past two years was performed.

Eric Judy has still not surfaced, and despite not having any conflicting dates with The Shins, Joe Plummer also did not perform. Both positions, to our knowledge are still being filled in by Russell Higbee (formally of Man Man) and Modest Mouse drum tech Davey Brozowsky. Lisa Molinaro from Talkdemonic also played violin on some songs, as she has in the past year.

Tonight the band plays the main stage at Coachella. And while it was originally reported that the set might be streamed, it seems like Modest Mouse's set is one of the few that will not be. Should that change, I'm sure it will be updated here.

Be Brave

Shit In Your Cut

Thanks to TinyLaugh and McWeird007 for the set list updates and the names of the new songs.

Source: www.interstate-8.com • View topic - names of the new songs played last night...

We've been sitting on these dates for a while due to a lack of time to do updates, so hopefully you've all been paying attention. It's mostly the US dates that are sold out at this point.

Let's start with the band hitting the road in two days with their predominantly Californian dates leading up to and around the Coachella festival this coming weekend. It will be the band's first performance since July last year, and hopefully some insight into what they've been working on in the past year. Hopefully we'll see the return of Eric Judy, and with none of The Shins' tour dates conflicting with Modest Mouse's, maybe Joe Plummer will be back as well.

Secondly, in the past two weeks a lot of the gaps in the European tour have been filled in. Check the tour page for all the details. Club and festival dates have been added in Norway, Luxembourg, France, Germany (more) and the UK (more), bringing the total amount of performances so far to 36. Tickets appear to be on sale still for all of these and the only European show so far listed as sold out is Brighton.

Lastly, three of the shows in the UK have had their venues upgraded to larger venues, that's in Bristol, London and Leeds. Your original ticket is valid, just make sure you take note of the venue changes.

Source: MODEST MOUSE || OFFICIAL WEBSITE » TOURS

Although not yet officially announced, a string of UK dates has been popping up on websites this morning, with a few of the dates being confirmed by the venues.

It seems highly promising that in between all the European Festival madness coming our way this Spring, Modest Mouse has managed to close a lot of the gaps with eight non-festival dates scattered around the island. This is on top of the single Scottish Festival that has already been announced last month.

This will be the band's first time back in the United Kingdom in almost three years. Tickets should be on sale shortly.

Thanks to Joseph T and Scott M for bringing this to our attention after the announcement of the London show this morning.

Source: Monday 18th March Onsales | GetToTheFront

Following on from last months news that Modest Mouse would be performing at Coachella, and the few European festival dates that started appearing on and off, the band's website today has been updated with a batch of club gigs between in the two Coachella dates in California and Arizona.

Also check out an updated list of Summer European festival dates that include new performances in Germany and Scotland.

Refer to the band's website for when tickets go on sale.

UPDATE: The Pomona date seems to have been removed from Modest Mouse's site. We'll keep an eye on it to see if it was a mistake. The Pomona date is back up on their website, but the ticket link now seems invalid.

Source: MODEST MOUSE || OFFICIAL WEBSITE » TOURS

Right on the heels of the Coachella announcement last week, Modest Mouse has been added to the Best Kept Secret Festival happening in Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands this coming June 23.

Tickets seem to have already been on sale for a bit, but Modest Mouse was only announced this morning, along with a few other bands. They're going to be playing on the Sunday, the last night of the festival, with headliners Portishead and Sigur Rós.

Hopefully this is an indication that the band is gearing up to perform the Spring festival circuit over the months between these two festivals.

UPDATE: No sooner than we'd posted this information, it was brought to our attention that Modest Mouse's own website has silently also listed a June 28 date for the Azkena Rock Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, a few days after the Dutch festival.

Early bird tickets are on sale until tomorrow, after that it seems you'll need to look on the Spanish division of Ticketmaster.

Source: Best Kept Secret Festival

The Coachella lineup was announced last night, and Modest Mouse is set to perform on the Friday for both weekends of the festival. That's April 12 and 19. They will be performing alongside Blur, The Stone Roses, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more. This marks the band's first time ever performing at this festival.

Another interesting side note, is that Johnny Marr will also be performing on the same days, which could see him join the band on stage again. However they were in the same position in England a few years ago, where Marr was performing at the same festival with The Cribs and nothing came of it.

Either way, it's good to have some live dates on the horizon, maybe leading up to a more structured tour, or perhaps the hint that Modest Mouse will be doing the festival circuit this Spring/Summer. The band has not performed together since July last year.

Tickets go on sale this Tuesday. Watch the trailer for the festival below.

UPDATE: It's actually been pointed out that they made their debut at Coachella in 1999. Embarrassing for us! Thanks Kurt for pointing this out.

Source: Coachella

Pitchfork has posted an interview with Outkast's Big Boi, during which the question came up as to what had happened to the work he did with Modest Mouse back in 2011.

Pitchfork: What made you want to work with bands like Little Dragon and Phantogram?
BB: I had just finished working with Modest Mouse for their project, and after that I was like, "Man, I need to start doing this for my own shit." Just bringing people in. So we did. We would live day-in and day-out with people, go bowling, go out to eat, and then come back and record, watch a movie, record. It was like funk summer camp.

Pitchfork: What's happening with the stuff you did with Modest Mouse?
BB: It's for their record; it's coming. We actually took a trip back out there to go see them a couple months ago. I did maybe three records with them. Isaac [Brock] is cool, man, like cowboy cool. He showed me how to make a bong out of an apple and shit. For real.

Not much to go on, but it is interesting to hear that he has been in touch with them recently and that it does sound like the material will be put to use and not abandoned.

Also in the interest of keeping some conversation going (in these dry news times), Big Boi does have a new album coming out next month, of which it doesn't sound like the track-listing or collaborating artists has been confirmed. Seeing how he has been working with other bands, it will be interesting to keep an eye on it, and see if any member from Modest Mouse makes an appearance on it. Pure thinking out loud this last part.

Source: Update: Big Boi | Features | Pitchfork