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Seth Jabour

@seth_jabour

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Guitarist for Les Savy Fav, guitarist /song writer for Office Romance, father of twins

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The Mark on the Wall

Three decades into a career that started in a tiny cramped shed near Isaac Brock's mother's trailer in Washington. Modest Mouse remains one of the stranger sounds of American rock music. By all normal cookie cut industry logic, a band whose sonic mark is a neurotic collision of warped harmonic harmonics, jagged sharp tempo shifts, and manic, lisping yelps about mortality and pavement should have imploded before the turn of the century. Instead, they got people's heads to sway and became world wide known arena fillers without ever truly smoothing out their jagged edges and conforming to the bullshit of the early MTV revolution.

Their long enduring success as a road touring band is not built on smooth nostalgia or robotic note for note fidelity like an exact timed machine. It runs on the high wire tension that has defined them since all the way back in 1993, the feeling that the wheels could fall off the wagon at any given second, right before Isaac Brock grabs the wheel and steers it into transcendence.

Long before "Float On" made its way onto MTV and commercial radio fixtures in 2004, Modest Mouse earned their stripes the hard way. They were nomadic road dogs in an Econoline van, touring relentlessly, playing damp VFW halls, dive bars with shitty beer, and basements of strangers in suburban Seattle neighborhoods. That geography of the bleak open skies of the Pacific Northwest, the creeping dread of suburban strip malls, and gas station meals became the literal bedrock of their sound.

What makes their 33 year live run remarkable is how stubbornly they refuse to treat touring as a museum piece. A Modest Mouse concert is unpredictable. Brock still approaches his pedalboard like a mad scientist, pulling howling, percussive noises out of his custom guitars and barking through secondary telephone

Full write up www.durbanm.com

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Noise was made. So long, SoCal!

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The perfect family outing to see Modest Mouse yesterday. Jude is 4 and she LOVES @modestmouse and danced her heart out. Blake 11 was snapping snots with his dad. Thank you Issac and Benny, Russell, Damon, Keith, Seth, Robin, Edward and crew you guys rock!

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@modestmouse is a Texas band in spirit, and they rocked this state like no other! From some special performances of all time favorites in parking lots to stages in air conditioned mega theaters, every song performed was special and unique. But what made this even more incredible were the friends I went with and made along the way. Special special special shout outs to my travel buddies, @rowancorancejuice & @chelle.aerial, @insight.photos & @samwommack.img for taking show pics of the Austin and San Antonio shows respectively for use on the podcast, everyone who did an interview with me during the concerts (send me a DM if you'd like to talk about your experiences further!) and of course, everyone involved in the Modest Mouse concert experiences- band and crew alike. Y'all are the best. See you next tour!

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Blue is beautiful…but so is yellow, orange, and green! Spectrum infinite! Does anyone else in New Haven remember the time I stapled up this Make-Up poster on an abandoned laundromat very close to where The Cannon is now and it stayed there for about fifteen months? The first photo is the condition it went up in… Obviously well loved, but had seen better days after four states, six apartments, and 15 years!

The first time I saw them was college in Providence with Les Savy Fav and Thee Hydrogen Terrors (whose drummer Nick, it turns out, was a year or two ahead of me at Amity High School here in Connecticut!).. and then I proceeded to see them every chance I got, including The show with Bratmobile at the T.A.Z. in New London which is where the black and white photo of Mr. Svenonius and last flyer are from, 1999. That show was great because I got to hang out in the art gallery area with Steve Gamboa, and pester him with questions about certain shots and camera trickery used in Guy Picciotto’s Super 8 short films “Please Cry” and “Cry Please”… The Providence show was notable because the next morning they ate breakfast at a spot a bunch of us were living above, and we basically hung out the window and watched them eat in the little courtyard area like they were the Beatles (which to us at that time they might as well have been!).

When I moved to Cincinnati one of the first events I went to possibly the first week there was a screening of the “Blue Is Beautiful” short film travelogue by @ex_lamp at The Comet in Cincinnati with photos from @cynthi4connolly and @instapatgraham … Probably the best jukebox and definitely the best bean and rice burritos in all of Cincinnati!

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Tonight was wonderful and so needed.💜💜🙏

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@modestmouse at @piersixpavilion on 10.09.26. A few favorites from the set.

📸: Ash Lazarus Orr

#ModestMouse #Baltimore #IsaacBrock #canonphotography #htbarp

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At the very last minute, Dolly decided she wanted to sing a bit of Jolene, so cool and gracious, she was truly the best.

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@modestmouse performs at @thesquarepdx on Aug. 9, 2026.

“They didn’t play Float On!” — some guy after the show to me. They didn’t, but they did play Heart Cooks Brain, Grey Ice Water, Trucker’s Atlas, Cowboy Dan and so many other incredible deep cuts. And had an almost two hour long set. It was amazing.

Shot for @elevenpdx

#ModestMouse #concertphotography #concertphotos #livemusic #indierock

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