Who Is On Tour With Modest Mouse?

Modest Mouse Reveal Their Tour for the Coming Year with an Oddly Selected List of Supporting Bands

The American indie rockers Modest Mouse Tickets are currently promoting their fourth studio album titled The Golden Casket, which came out in 2021, and have just revealed a vast North American tour that will take place in March–August 2023, with nearly thirty gigs across the USA and Canada.

As one might have predicted from a group that has experimented with the band's sound for over thirty years, Modest Mouse has assembled a compellingly diverse lineup of bands to tour with. The range of genres and styles in the support bands is quite diverse and should demonstrate the band's vast influence and also provide for quite an exciting concert performance each night.

With the tour starting in early March, the first act to perform is Japanese Breakfast, an indie pop project by a Korean-American musician, Michelle Zauner. Japanese Breakfast released the album Jubilee in 2021 to rave reviews as the band ventured into the electronic rock genre and saw Zauner's lyrics delve deeper into self-portraiture. Zauner has quickly risen to fame as an indie icon whose cinematic, 80s-influenced pop should complement Modest Mouse well during the first two weeks of the tour.

For late April and May's spring leg, opening for the high-energy group will be Philly punk rockers Mannequin Pussy. Philadelphia's Mannequin Pussy is a punk band consisting of singer-guitarist Marisa Dabice that produces catchy, wild-spirited songs in the punk vein, with attention to thundering drums and distorted guitars. This is a direction that the band received a lot of credit for on its 2019 album Patience, especially for Dabice's lyrics. While Mannequin Pussy's intentionally abrasive punk-influenced alt-rock meets the sophistication of catchy punk-pop, Modest Mouse's eclectic indie-rock will be interesting to see alongside.

While June's early-summer dates will have Modest Mouse opening for an act that may as well be from a different galaxy of music"—acclaimed soul/R&B group Durand Jones & the Indications. The band operating in the vein of classic rock and roll began its rise to fame in 2019 after releasing its second album, American Love Call, characterized by Jones powerful voice and the use of horns. When Jones, a charismatic and talented singer, pairs up with Modest Mouse, an indie rock band, we get a perfect example of an unconventional yet interesting performance.

While summer is the general theme, the specific choice of support bands provides a decisively folky twist in July and August as the tour is set around them. Austen-based group Hovvdy will contribute their fuzzy, harmonized indie folk to most midsummer dates. As with such albums as True Love, which came out in 2021, Hovvdy makes enveloping, lightly nostalgic folk-pop that isn't devoid of heft. For a complete shift in tone, why not sit back and enjoy the soft whispers of two voices accompanied by only an acoustic guitar next to the loud guitar music of Modest Mouse?

Lastly, the performances in August will be opened by Strand of Oaks, which is the solo project of the Pennsylvania folk-rock artist Timmy Showalter. Showalter is appreciated for blending sweeping, Springsteen-styled rock into highly personal folk storytelling. His anthemic choruses and emotive singing would lend well to Modest Mouse's tendencies for explosive culminations. It will be quite fascinating to see Showalter change the band's folk-rock acoustics suitable for other types of clubs and transform them into something suitable for opening for bigger acts.

In total, the Modest Mouse 2023 tour looks to offer fans not only an expansive, eclectic setlist from the main act each night but an opening lineup composed of some of the best emerging bands across the indie rock, pop, folk, and punk genres. The list of supporting bands, from punk rock Mannequin Pussy to the sultry R&B of Durand Jones, has the added benefit of showcasing the variety of sounds that any fan of the bands involved is likely to appreciate while at the same time illustrating the conceptual unity of the shows based on untamed individuality and refusal to be pinned down to a genre. In conclusion, fans will get their show, in which every group opening for Modest Mouse can be of any style and sound completely different from the headliners, yet will be as inspired and original as the indie veterans themselves.