Lampshades on Fire

Album: Strangers to Ourselves (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The lead single from Modest Mouse's 2015 album Strangers to Ourselves, the band first played this live back in 2011.
  • The danceable tune finds vocalist Isaac Brock using an extended partying metaphor comparing the destructive acts of the human race to the party life on the road where places keep get trashed:

    Pack up again, head to the next place
    Where we'll make the same mistakes
    Burn it up, we'll just chop it down
    But this one's done so where to now?


    Brock concludes the song by singing about having wreaked havoc on earth, humanity will be forced to search for another planet, where inevitably the same mistakes will be made.
  • Modest Mouse performed this rambling rocker about climate change during the March 17, 2015 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. No actual lampshades were set on fire during their performance. It was the band's first late-night TV appearance since 2009.
  • The video stars Natasha Lyonne. We see the Orange Is The New Black actress leading a debauched punk house party where Modest Mouse are performing the song. There are also shots of drunken revellers piercing their cheeks, tongues in mousetraps and the flaming lampshades referenced in the song title.

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