“Hey there, floaters — what’s new?”
The Norwegian Pearl is edging away from Miami’s Cruise Terminal B, and a crowd has gathered on the pool deck, waiting for the show to kick off. The amiable woman in her thirties who just welcomed us is greeted with a chorus of cheers when she introduces herself as “Sixthman Betty,” a staffer from the specialty events outfit Sixthman who has been briskly answering questions from members of this cruise’s official Facebook group for months. She’s become a bit of a celebrity aboard a ship that’s already full of little celebrities.
It’s February 2026, and the Pearl is hosting the debut Ice Cream Floats, a four-day at-sea music festival put together and led by indie rock veterans Modest Mouse. Our itinerary spans two days toward Puerto Plata, followed by two days back toward Miami, with performances from the headliners and a curated undercard of indie acts along the way. For Sixthman, which organizes dozens of themed concert cruises every year, this is routine business. For Modest Mouse and their fans, it’s uncharted seas, in a figurative sense.
Betty tells us the band will come out soon. In the meantime, servers will pass out a complimentary shot of something smooth and sweet to anyone in the crowd who wants one. We’re told to keep our plastic cups topped up until we get the signal to throw them back. While we wait for entertainment, a track from Destroyer’s Kaputt thunders from the PA, a potent blend of indie-rock and yacht-rock carried on the sea breeze.
The air is a cool low 60s Fahrenheit—unseasonably chilly by Miami standards, though after the subfreezing cold and heavy snows I endured in Ohio for weeks I’m content in a hoodie. Yet the dark bank of clouds doesn’t bode well for what’s supposed to be a full Modest Mouse set to inaugurate our voyage. The band’s start time has already been shifted up from 5:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. to accommodate the weather. When the group finally appears, frontman Isaac Brock speaks plainly.
“I’ll give you the neutral update,” Brock says, dressed casually in a white hoodie bearing his own logo. He explains that because a storm is forecast, Modest Mouse will perform a shortened acoustic set this afternoon and will look to fit in the full scheduled show later in the weekend. The band takes a group photo with the crowd before they start, but Brock doesn’t give a cue to throw back the shots. Instead, he reflects on the novelty of this situation.
“I’ve never been on a boat like this before,” he tells us. “I’ve seen them from afar. They’re wild.” He says the ship’s grandeur has stirred a sense of inadequacy, as if he should be better at things than he is, a feeling he admits to grappling with.
On one hand, I get it. A vessel this grand is awe-inspiring, almost intimidating. On the other hand, Brock could cut himself some slack. He might not know how to assemble a Jewel-class ship for around 2,400 passengers, but the idea of Modest Mouse as a band that rose from nothing and built something substantial remains evident in the throng gathered on the pool deck. All these people—fans, friends, strangers—are a testament to that.
***
“We’re not exactly cruise-people,” Greg Malzberg says, “but we’re Modest Mouse people.”
Malzberg, 35, is recounting how he and his wife Jamie, 37, wound up aboard a 965-foot behemoth bound for the Dominican Republic despite a shared reluctance toward cruising that bordered on scorn. Like many I chat with on board, including Brock, this is their first high-seas vacation. Yet when they learned a floating music festival headlined by Modest Mouse was in the works, they couldn’t resist the fun.
In some ways Ice Cream Floats resembles a standard Norwegian cruise. Pearl passengers can indulge in a luxury spa, a smoke-filled casino, hot tubs, karaoke, and a range of casual and formal eateries. When we reach Puerto Plata, we can opt for an overpriced taxi to the beach, or stay in a waterfront shopping complex by the pier. There are onboard performers, too; this time they’re Modest Mouse and their personally chosen peers, playing to crowds who show up in more band tees than you’d expect on a typical sea getaway.
When everything’s tallied, Modest Mouse will take the Pearl’s pool-deck stage three times: an acoustic appetizer on Thursday, a fan-fueled set of favorites on Friday, and a full-album rendition of their 2000 landmark The Moon and Antarctica on Sunday afternoon. On Saturday, Brock’s side project Ugly Casanova will perform—the first time in 24 years. Band members will also drop in for DJ sets and a range of interactive events that promise access beyond the usual rock show.
Every other performer on board is doing two or three sets as well—mostly veteran Modest Mouse collaborators like Built To Spill and Califone, but also newer acts such as Mannequin Pussy and Tropical Fuck Storm. David Cross from Mr. Show and Arrested Development, whose career has been intertwined with indie rock since Yo La Tengo’s “Sugarcube” video if not earlier, will host stand-up in the Stardust Theater, one of several rooms tucked away inside the boat.
Beyond the performances, fans can partake in autograph sessions, browse a well-stocked merchandise shop, and get ink at an onboard tattoo parlor. The ship’s regular cocktails have been renamed to honor Modest Mouse—Novocain Stain for the margarita, Cowboy Dan for the old fashioned, and so on. Special keepsakes are delivered to each cabin throughout the weekend, including a commemorative poster and a postcard that doubles as a record featuring Brock covering “I Don’t Want To Live On The Moon” from Sesame Street. Ice Cream Floats tunes are piped into the ship’s lounges and hallways; the first track I hear is “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.”
The Malzbergs are here partly because Modest Mouse played a pivotal role in their meet-cute, which also involved the band’s songs acting as ambient music. Years earlier, when Greg was a resident in a psychiatric emergency room, he controlled the tunes that played in the facility. He put on a track from Modest Mouse’s 1996 debut This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About and was thrilled to learn that Jamie, a nurse practitioner who had caught his eye, knew it. As their romance blossomed into marriage, attending concerts by bands like LCD Soundsystem became a central thread in their relationship. They identify as indie rock fans.
They are also DINKs based in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, seeking a respite from one of the harshest winters in memory. The Malzbergs were planning a getaway of some kind, so a Caribbean boat with a handful of their favorite groups felt like the perfect choice. Here they are, sipping Reubens in a faux-Irish pub called O’Sheehan’s, explaining that while their younger selves might have balked at the idea, age has given them a different perspective.
“As I’ve grown older, it doesn’t feel like selling out anymore,” Greg says. “If I were eighteen, I’d have said, ‘A cruise? Are you for real?’ Now, it makes sense. He’s likely supporting his family.”
The person of interest here is Brock, the Portland-based musician who has fronted Modest Mouse since his teen years. He’s now 50, the sole original member remaining, and he’s steered the band from a DIY success story into an indie-rock institution.
If you want to quibble about the term “indie,” Modest Mouse is only just returning to true independence. Between The Moon and Antarctica and 2021’s The Golden Casket, they were signed to Epic Records. Their new single Look How Far…, issued a few weeks after the cruise, marks their first release on Brock’s own Glacial Pace label. Regardless of label affiliations, “indie rock” remains the most apt description for them—a world they helped shape, even as their quirks and deviations expanded beyond its borders.
Brock has always charted his own course. Writing about poverty, heavy drinking, and endless road trips, he brought a rough-hewn sensibility to a brainy, sensitive milieu without sacrificing big ideas or raw emotion. In a scene once deemed “college rock,” he sang about hoping to pass high school, channeling both rough-edged and thoughtful vibes and drawing inspiration from peers like Pixies and Tom Waits. When his bandmates relocated to Seattle, he retreated to Cottage Grove, Oregon—a place that reminded him of his roots. This is the same man who once joked about stabbing himself with a pocketknife onstage (a moment he later said got out of hand) and who used to brag about running over dogs for sport (a clearly facetious boast). A 2009 MTV News piece captured his reputation: “A maniac, a monster, a misanthrope… the surliest loner in indie rock, and proud of it.”
Beyond his natural resistance to convention, Brock has always worked to distinguish Modest Mouse. In the ’90s he consciously tied the band to their Issaquah, Washington hometown, distancing them from the Seattle grunge buzz and the Olympia indie-pop scene. Yet they moved through those worlds: releasing music on labels like Olympia’s K Records and Seattle’s Up Records, drawing influence from regional heroes like Lync and Built To Spill, touring and collaborating with scrappy, everyman rockers such as 764-HERO. They recorded many of their early classics with DIY icon Calvin Johnson.
Though they’ve long since surfaced to become a radio-friendly icon, this group’s roots lie in an underground counterculture that, in theory at least, stood against the cruise industry’s gaudy excess. The indie-leaning ideal is supposed to celebrate underdogs and outsiders, community and shared action, integrity and anti-commercial tendencies. At minimum, it’s supposed to be cool in a way that clashes with the cruise world’s reputation as bougie, dumbed-down holiday fare—something David Foster Wallace once dismissed as “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Speaking of Calvin Johnson’s former collaborators, one can imagine Kurt Cobain signing on to a Nirvana-themed cruise only with several layers of self-critique added in for good measure.
This tension helps explain why Kurt Vile hesitated about taking this on. When I meet the stoner-folk icon on the cruise’s final day, he says he’s had a great time aboard the Pearl. He keeps crossing paths with Cross late at night and laughing. He’s been captivated by a looping playlist of Ice Cream Floats artists playing on the stateroom TVs. All three Built To Spill sets have impressed him. Still, in past years he and his partner have condemned cruises as wasteful and corny. So when the chance came to perform on Ice Cream Floats, he worried his partner might veto the trip—and perhaps deserve to.
“I’m not knocking anyone who’s on cruises,” Vile says, explaining his thought process before agreeing to join. “But in a way, it’s a textbook example of American excess.”
It’s not merely the idea of an indie-rock cruise that feels odd. A Modest Mouse cruise seems almost absurd. This is a band known for moody, prickly, concept-heavy material, focused on the American West’s vast, desolate landscapes and the heavens—an existential world of absent creators and stars that look like projectors aimed at Earth. They’ve released a number of songs about shipwrecks and boats, from 1997’s “Shit Luck” to 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. They’re about as far from the idea of a sunniest beach party as you can get.
Yet these are also the “Float On” guys. When their 2004 breakthrough single surfaced, it was the first Modest Mouse tune to radiate positivity in an era of otherwise dark material. It appeared on Good News for People Who Like Bad News, a record packed with tales of hardship, loss, and the great beyond. The hit’s success—performed on The O.C., covered on American Idol, nominated for Best Rock Song at the Grammys, and peaking on the Billboard Hot 100—proved they could infuse their music with a glimmer of optimism without losing their edge. The lyrics recount misfortune—lost jobs, clumsy mistakes, a fender-bender with a cop—but Brock navigates them with a combination of grace and hopeful resilience. “Sometimes life’s OK,” he croons, and the blend of the band’s punchy rhythms and spacey guitar work becomes a buoyant singalong.
“Float On” established Modest Mouse as a fixture on alternative rock radio and reframed Brock, the wild-eyed visionary, as a gruff optimist. The group allowed a few rays of sunshine into their sound, and the rewards followed swiftly. Since then, the ride hasn’t always been smooth, but Modest Mouse has evolved from their early volatility into a steady, middle-aged consistency. The trajectory from their earliest era to today is less about dramatic reinventions and more about a long tail of sustained work. They regularly head out on package tours with peers like Weezer, the Pixies, and the Flaming Lips—beloved bands that have become brands, yet whose most essential work may lie behind them. Like many artists with a long career, Modest Mouse now navigates legacy rather than chasing every fresh spark.
***
Isaac Brock did not sign up for this nonsense.
Okay, not exactly—he did sign on, but he didn’t fully grasp what he was agreeing to. When I catch up with Modest Mouse’s founder on the cruise’s final afternoon, he’s been photographed with about 400 cabins’ worth of fans, one at a time, in a penthouse suite on a VIP deck called the Haven. Later that day, he’s slated to host a Mystery Science Theater 3000–style roast of The Devil’s Advocate (1997) even though, as he puts it, he’s more the shusher than the heckler.
There are other appearances scheduled for the weekend, including an AMA on the pool deck that will pull him out of bed before noon. Brock intends to see every band at least once, plus Caseymagic, the punk-rock magician he hired for the Pearl. He isn’t sure he’s up for Ugly Casanova’s reunion show, and he promised someone on the Modest Mouse fan club board that he’ll relearn a song he likely forgot. There’s plenty to do on this vacation, and for now, when he probably should be rehearsing or resting, he’s explaining why he agreed to headline a cruise in the first place.
“It does feel kind of off-brand,” Brock says between sips of iced coffee. “I’m enjoying it, but I haven’t quite come to terms with it.”
His initial dream for a cruise was different—“Seattle to Alaska, that’s my vibe: cold and gray.” But he found out you can’t perform outdoors on an Alaskan cruise because much of the coastline is a nature preserve, and the noise would bother the wildlife. “I’m for that, and against pissing off wolves with my loud rock,” he concedes.
The splendor of the wilderness has always mattered to Brock. Modest Mouse’s 1997 opus The Lonesome Crowded West is about the folly of turning charming Cascadian towns into soulless sprawl. He sang about growing up in a trailer park on the tender ballad “Trailer Trash” and now and then his family lives on 30 acres of forest near Portland, a personal nature preserve within the city. At the AMA later, he’ll say that if he wasn’t making music, he’d likely be a biologist or a park ranger. Before joining Sixthman, he needed to be assured Ice Cream Floats would not cause unacceptable environmental harm.
“I think they claimed it would have a smaller carbon footprint than a typical show,” he says. “I want to believe that, though I’m not sure I do. I mean, I know there’s a smokestack on this thing.”
Even after agreeing to headline, Brock’s reservations lingered until the Pearl glided away. “I’d never been on a cruise ship before because I didn’t want to be stuck inside a casino, and I’m not crazy about Vegas,” he says. “But last night I thought, maybe I could actually live on a boat. That could be what I need—escapism, pure and simple, for a few days.”
Vibe-wise, it’s quite pleasant—far nicer than doomscrolling through posts about ICE raids or Epstein-related leaks. The all-day buffet is adequate, but not extraordinary, and the weather isn’t entirely cooperative—during a gusty pool-deck performance, for instance, Vile hides his long hair under a MF Doom cap—but there’s still plenty of space to lounge with a book and a drink. As for the Modest Mouse-specific bits, Brock’s more outlandish ideas, like plank-walking, didn’t materialize. Instead, there are bingo sessions hosted by David Cross and crafting soirées for a nightly parade inviting passengers to celebrate their inner weirdness.
The music, consistently outstanding, also shines. Given prior impressions of their live show, I knew Mannequin Pussy would deliver stadium-grade urgency, and they do not disappoint. Califone’s deconstructed roots-rock is every bit as compelling as I hoped, performed in a lounge during sunset that opens doors to other dimensions. Other acts creep up on me too. I’d never witnessed a singing saw before Califone’s set, and Portugal. The Man’s stage party energy lands harder than I anticipated.
Modest Mouse themselves are in strong form—polished, yet volatile and combustible, delivering back-to-back gems that remind me why they became a doorway into indie rock for me a quarter-century ago. Even with the loss of co-founders Eric Judy and the late Jeremiah Green, Brock’s current lineup brings the songs to life with affection more than commerce. Ugly Casanova’s set, with Brock in a beekeeper suit and backed by members of Modest Mouse, Califone, and the Black Heart Procession, plus producer Suzy Shinn, might have been the weekend’s peak of awe.
Mannequin Pussy are having a better time here than they did on Coheed and Cambria’s S.S. Neverender cruise on this very ship three years prior. When frontwoman Marisa Dabice first got the invite to join Coheed, she balked: “Cruises aren’t for me.” She’s afraid of the open sea, and there’s a drummer who gets seasick. It sounded like a recipe for nausea and chaos. The Coheed experience was rough—little sleep, lots of seasickness, and a nightmare of a trip. They swore never again.
But Modest Mouse extended the invitation near the end of a long promo cycle for 2024’s I Got Heaven, and Mannequin Pussy figured they could use the money to keep moving forward while they work on their next album. They also get to host Austin Powers trivia, indulging their passion for the Mike Myers spy spoofs (at the event, teams adopt the name Mannequin Pussy Galore, and Dabice distributes prizes from her own stash of Austin Powers relics).
I tell Dabice that headlining a cruise is an unlikely twist for Modest Mouse’s circle. She counters that bespoke experiences for hardcore fans have become a crucial aspect of the music industry. “I’m not surprised anymore by what people will do to create a festival-like vibe or an entertaining, funny setup for fans,” she says.
On a Modest Mouse cruise, there’s a degree of amusement for Tim Rutili, Califone’s frontman and a living legend to those who celebrate the craft. He may not be a household rock star, and his vibe isn’t about flash. Onstage with Ugly Casanova, Brock ribbed him for dressing like Larry David, and Rutili frequently sits during performances, a habit he’s not shy about. These days Califone lives on the DIY edge of indie rock—dive bars, house shows, and direct-to-fan Bandcamp sales.
Rutili has never stepped foot on a cruise ship before this weekend, and his moody, abrasive music may be the antithesis of cruise-appropriate. “When they invited us to do Califone on the cruise, I thought, this is going to be really odd,” he says, “and it was indeed quite strange.” He enjoyed watching the sky burn orange during Califone’s sunset set, though their inland performance in the atrium under O’Sheehan’s resembled playing in a moving mall.
When I find Rutili in the ship’s smoking area Saturday afternoon, he’s just finished chatting with Sixthman staff in a lounge deep inside the vessel. “I was asking about other cruises they run,” he says. “They do some truly ridiculous things—like The Bachelor cruises, a Hallmark-themed vacation, a Headbanger’s Ball cruise. It’s turbo marketing, and I wasn’t sure I knew what to make of Ice Cream Floats.” Narrowing Ice Cream Floats to a single lane helped him realize: “This is turbo marketing, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
***
If you remember Sister Hazel, you probably recall “All For You,” a jangly, folk-pop tune that hit #1 on Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay chart. The song dominated VH1 in 1997 and may still be playing somewhere near you right now. I don’t know if I’ve actively chased that track, but its chorus—“It’s hard to say what it is I see in you / Wonder if I’ll always be with you”—is etched in my memory. Sister Hazel may be a one-hit wonder to some, yet there are fans whose bond with the band runs deeper. From their Gainesville beginnings, they had a street team called the Hazelnuts who helped drive their mainstream breakthrough and stuck with them when the success waned. In 2001, during an online chat with Sister Hazel’s manager Andy Levine, the Hazelnuts expressed a desire for a weekend with the band they’d tirelessly promoted. Levine began exploring how to make it happen.
His eventual plan was to invite the band’s core supporters on a cruise. On Labor Day weekend 2001, Rock and Roll at Sea set sail from Tampa to Key West and Cozumel. Onboard, Sister Hazel performed a concert for 400 of their most devoted fans, and Levine saw a vision for a company that could stage closer-to-the-fans experiences all the time. Thus began Sixthman and what would become The Rock Boat for Sister Hazel’s followers.
For a time, the Rock Boat was Sixthman’s sole venture. But as the flagship cruise expanded—adding more bands and drawing in larger crowds—the company gained traction. In 2004, they launched the Rock Slope at a Colorado ski resort. In 2007, Sixthman produced cruises for Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Barenaked Ladies. They kept expanding into floaty festivals: a John Mayer cruise, a Kid Rock cruise, a Zac Brown cruise, a VH1 cruise, a 311 cruise, a Weezer cruise, a KISS Kruise.
In 2012, Norwegian Cruise Line acquired Sixthman, and the events multiplied. Paramore came aboard. So did Diplo’s Mad Decent label. By the time Levine stepped down as CEO in 2016 to pursue other ventures, some non-musical theme cruises had joined the mix, like the Impractical Jokers Cruise and Gronk’s Party Boat starring future NFL Hall of Famer Rob Gronkowski. By 2019, they had even scheduled a Mediterranean cruise featuring indie-pop stalwarts Belle & Sebastian. The cruises paused for COVID-19, but by late 2021 the ships were back in operation.
That’s when Jeff Cuellar entered the scene. Cuellar previously spent two decades with festival promoter AC/C3/Live Nation, helping to bring Bonnaroo and Forecastle to life. Fresh off a period of COVID shutdowns, he was easing back into the scene when former Sixthman CEO Anthony Diaz invited him aboard. Despite initial nerves about joining the cruise-ship sector—an industry hit particularly hard by the pandemic—Cuellar says the ability to intensely serve niche communities drew him in. “With Roo, a large portion of our guests were coming back, lineup or not,” Cuellar says in a phone chat ahead of Ice Cream Floats. “That sense of place and community has always resonated with me.”
Industry-leading Sixthman and similar promoters like Cloud 9 Adventures and Entertainment Cruise Productions have learned how profitable hyper-specialization can be. Their trick is to cultivate a core audience of superfans for a particular niche—whether that’s a band, a comedian, or even a sport or cuisine—and lure them with the promise of intimate access and like-minded community. “If there’s a fanbase that’s incredibly devoted to a thing,” Cuellar notes, “there could be a chance to craft something truly special.” He believes these kinds of experiences are breaking down the stigma that cruising is “just for older folks, a lazy pool-deck vacation lacking excitement.”
Sixthman has 26 events planned for 2026, ranging from Creed’s Summer of ’99 and Beyond to Sublime’s Reef Madness. Cruises centered on hip-hop, outlaw country, blues, heavy metal, EDM, punk, emo, roots rock, garage rock, and singer-songwriter fare fill their calendar. Beyond music, Sixthman has hosted a pro-wrestling cruise headlined by Chris Jericho, a Food Network voyage called Chefs Making Waves, and even a Jay and Silent Bob cruise. And it doesn’t end with Sixthman. Other organizers offer everything from an ’80s cruise to a Star Trek voyage, a jam-band cruise, a crafting voyage, a true-crime cruise, a geek-culture music cruise starring Jonathan Coulton, and the world’s only maritime motorcycle rally.
Part of what makes these ventures feel special is tailoring them as much as possible, which requires meticulous, detail-focused planning and a great deal of setup and teardown during ship changeovers between themes. The process can involve small touches, like branded felt on casino tables or elevator-door graphics, or large-scale alterations, like installing a skate ramp and halfpipe for Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog Cruise. Cuellar says tasks that would take days for a land festival must be accomplished within hours on a cruise ship—an operation he likens to staging a Super Bowl halftime show.
(Coincidentally, Ice Cream Floats lands on Super Bowl Sunday, and how that broadcast is handled here versus other Sixthman cruises is revealing. On the Nate Bargatze cruise the company is also running this weekend, they’re showing the big game in the ship’s largest venue—the pool deck—since the comic is a sports enthusiast. Brock and many fans aren’t NFL-obsessed, so on the Pearl the Super Bowl is shown in smaller quarters at O’Sheehan’s. Built To Spill’s Doug Martsch watches his Seahawks win it all, while a few tables over, during Bad Bunny’s halftime, Cross gleefully proclaims, “This is MAGA’s worst nightmare!”)
How do they decide which artists to approach for a headlining spot on a cruise? It’s “a mix of science, art, and gut feeling,” Cuellar explains. “As a promoter, that’s probably the hardest part. Ask any promoter, it’s basically gambling.” He says it’s less about finding acts who can headline arenas worldwide than about identifying acts with a deeply engaged fan base. There’s a big difference between asking fans to kill a couple of hours in their hometown and committing to several days together on a boat. “Our business development team looks at Pollstar and Spotify numbers, but we go deeper—beyond social,” Cuellar says. “How active is their fan club? Do they have a subreddit? Do they have their own tequila? A podcast? These elements combine to form a complete picture.”
Modest Mouse does have a fan club—a Patreon-esque community launched in 2023 called Ice Cream Party, which also lends its name to Ice Cream Floats. A band spokesperson declined to share subscriber figures, but the fan-space is bustling enough to keep a lively message board buzzing—and evidently to spark Sixthman’s curiosity. Before becoming a fan club, Ice Cream Party was a standalone Modest Mouse single about a deeply depressing birthday party Brock attended as a child. Earlier still, Ice Cream Party was the name of Brock’s Portland recording studio, a nondescript building with an ice-cream-cone sign out front, where Modest Mouse writes, records, and rehearses, and where Brock runs his record label. As for why the name keeps resurfacing: “I don’t know. Ice cream is fun.”
Cuellar says Sixthman pursued a Modest Mouse cruise because “we didn’t have anything in that lane.” He’s right. It’s easy to assume indie rock fans would balk at the concept, but on the Pearl, Ice Cream Floats attendees proudly adore Modest Mouse, and their enthusiasm makes the whole idea feel plausible.
***
You should know about the couple who named their sons Isaac and Brock. Maegan Burkart and Mike, who met in 2001, were both fans of Modest Mouse long before they met. Mike was a college freshman at the University of Cincinnati when Maegan, a high-school senior, wandered into his dorm through a mutual friend. They bonded instantly, with the band’s music playing a central role in their early days together. Four years later, Modest Mouse scored their first dance at their wedding with a track from the same album that started it all for them. It’s actually a pretty good waltz, Mike notes.
By the time the Burkart family welcomed their first child, they agreed to name him Isaac in homage to the band that had threaded itself into their story. When they learned they were expecting a second child, they hoped for a boy so they could name him Brock—as it happened, that’s exactly what they got. Today, here they are, inhaling the salty air and recounting a Modest Mouse-origin tale that drew them to Ice Cream Floats despite not previously being cruise fans.
“Because of Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse, we share a closer relationship with our two sons,” Maegan says. “They both have a special bond through it, which is heartwarming given that Isaac is autistic and sometimes struggles to connect, but Brock has always been there for him.”
When the boys were young, their parents often calmed them with Modest Mouse records. The family has seen the band live at Forecastle, Brooklyn Bowl, and beyond, and the kids learned about their namesake early on. “As far back as I can remember, around ages four or five, I’d tell people about it the moment I met them,” says Brock, now 19. “I’m pretty proud of that.”
Isaac, now 22, stayed home in Indiana because he worried he wouldn’t handle the cruise well, so Brock is holding down things for both brothers at Ice Cream Floats. He’s here as a true fan in his own right, not just to please his parents, and naming his favorite Modest Mouse album as 2015’s Strangers to Ourselves hints at a genuine, deeper engagement.
Their parents’ love for the group remains strong, too. Mike, 44, admires the “clairvoyant” feel of a lyric from thirty years ago like “The malls are the soon-to-be ghost towns.” Maegan, 42, is drawn to the band’s animal imagery and plans to fill her right arm with creature tattoos mentioned in Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova songs. Even now, they have no regrets about naming their children after this unpredictable musical companion. They’re grateful to Brock for the profound influence he’s had on their family.
That’s a common sentiment aboard Ice Cream Floats. The Pearl is full of superfans for whom this vacation holds deep personal meaning. There are certainly attendees who aren’t as absorbed in Modest Mouse as the rest, including Sixthman regulars who like to sample different offerings from the company and who stayed aboard after the Rock Boat era. One couple in the official Facebook group even mentions that they booked the cruise as a honeymoon primarily to catch the rowdy California band FIDLAR, who were originally part of the lineup but had to bow out. But the event sold out, and most people don’t invest between $1,380 (interior cabin) and $3,045 (suite) on Modest Mouse alone unless the band matters deeply to them.
Elsje Collins is one such person. Collins, 52, has been attending Modest Mouse shows since the ’90s and can’t recall how many times she’s seen them. Recently she’s been navigating life in a wheelchair due to hereditary spastic paraplegia, a progressive, non-terminal disease in the same family as ALS, which complicates her concert-going. She lives just outside of Portland, and the band’s local dates at the Edgefield amphitheater often present ADA challenges. So she rolled her power chair aboard the Pearl, hoping for a better vantage.
“Live music brings me immense joy and is one of the few things I can still do,” Collins says. “I used to hike and run; now I can’t, so seeing bands still gives me that thrill in my heart.”
Ash Fleshman is here for Built To Spill as much as Modest Mouse, but mostly she’s here for herself. Fleshman, 40, spent two decades as a porn actor and YouTuber. After her partner’s death three years ago, she stepped away from that world, got sober, and enrolled in film school in Philadelphia.
“A lot of what I do lives outside mainstream society, and I want to showcase worlds people might not know,” Fleshman explains, citing a recent short film about zines as a vehicle for expressing queer and antifascist views.
After living as a trans woman since the 2000s, Fleshman is preparing for gender-affirming surgery soon after the cruise. She plans to wear a bikini for the first time on the trip. Being here is part of her effort to meet new people and “see what society looks like” after spending years as a self-described “street kid.” She’s drawn to Modest Mouse because Brock’s songs reflect people who feel like outsiders trying to navigate life’s rough patches, including those raised in religious settings who now feel alienated from their faith communities.
“Their music speaks to people like me, to those whose backgrounds are often overlooked and scarred by life,” she says. “Life has thrown us a lot of obstacles, and you can see that in the tattoos and stories of people here.”
And then there are Jennifer Jackson, 50, and Brady Campbell, 29. A mother and son from Carson City, Nevada, they’ve attended countless shows together since Brady was a child; they’re not sure what their first Modest Mouse concert was, but they know it’s become their shared tradition. Campbell grew up loving Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and Modest Mouse has since become “their” band—the one they always see together. They’ve caught at least five Modest Mouse shows, and this weekend they’re here with heavy hearts: Campbell’s younger sister died by suicide last year, the day before her seventeenth birthday. Her name was Pearl.
“I was stunned and moved to tears when I learned the ship’s name was Pearl,” Jackson says.
She took that as a sign and bought tickets that day. Pearl had never taken part in the live-music bond with her mom and brother, and her tastes diverged dramatically from theirs. But when Jackson heard Modest Mouse’s “Ocean Breathes Salty” playing in Pearl’s room, she rushed in, thrilled to discover a shared interest. Now they’re looking forward to sharing that memory with the band when Modest Mouse performs it aboard the Pearl.
Jackson and Campbell had never cruised before Ice Cream Floats, but they’ve traveled for shows before and turned those trips into mini-vacations. “The show is the excuse to get away and explore the area for a couple of days beyond,” Campbell says. “So the waterborne version feels like a natural progression.”
“I think the synergy between entertainment platforms and vacations is going to become a bigger thing,” Jackson adds. “Because a lot of people are staying home; if a show is on, you either go or you don’t. But making it a destination—combining travel and entertainment—could be a hit.”
She’s voicing a line of thought gaining traction in the entertainment world. In an era when music and other entertainments are instantly accessible through streaming, while live-tickets climb in price, the casual fan risks being priced out. The way forward could be immersive events like these cruise-ship festivals, which justify the expense by offering something beyond the ordinary. As Joel Gouveia argued in a viral Substack post, we’re witnessing the death of the mass audience and the birth of a micro-community. The music industry has spent years chasing a million listeners; the next decade may belong to artists who can make a thousand people care forever.
Hayley Williams, who fronted Paramore on three Parahoy! cruises in the 2010s, shared Gouveia’s observation on her own Substack, adding, “Finally. Let’s see how many majors actually get it.” Williams herself has just left a major-label deal and is releasing music via her own label, embracing the idea of smaller-scale operations that reward hardcore fans with more artistic and financial freedom.
For a band like Modest Mouse, with a devoted following but no longer at the center of the cultural moment, such strategies—paid fan clubs with exclusive perks and a Caribbean music festival cruise—make sense. It would be harder for a newer act to pull off. This still leaves room for talented artists to find fans in this evolving landscape, but it also raises questions about who gets access when experiences like Ice Cream Floats aren’t affordable to everyone. The on-board reality, for those aboard, is a celebration—collected fondly by superfans who get to live in a moment that feels almost magical.
Those who could be here truly seem to savor it. I notice Collins, who sought better ADA accommodations, singing along to Ugly Casanova with a clear view, a patch reading Joy Is An Act of Resistance sewn onto the back of her chair. Fleshman, who’s here to make friends and start anew, banters with David Cross from the audience during his stand-up. When Modest Mouse perform Ocean Breathes Salty, my thoughts drift to Jackson and Campbell, here in memory of their cherished Pearl. It’s a moment of bittersweet clarity as I recall the song’s closing line: You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife? I hope this moment offers some catharsis for them all.
***
I must admit my initial reaction to a Modest Mouse cruise was a dismissive laugh. It seemed an odd pairing—Modest Mouse on a Caribbean party boat. And the truth is, I wasn’t sure I cared enough about the band in 2026 to drop thousands on the experience. The group once meant a great deal to me; the newer material is pleasant enough, but it doesn’t carry the revolution with it the way The Moon and Antarctica did when I was a teenager. The newer music feels enjoyable but not essential, as if it’s eliding the edge that once defined them.
Yet I’m also a man in his forties who still loves plenty of artists who are not at the peak of their powers. Wilco’s best work might have been some time past, yet I’d gladly attend their Mexican resort festival. The National—who fell out of favor with me in recent years—would get my ticket money if they ever did such a cruise. There’s a tether between longing and fandom that doesn’t dissipate with time, and I’m not immune to that pull. I’m a middle-aged enthusiast who loves these bands deeply, even if the current waves aren’t perfect, even if the nostalgia carries me more than the new music does.
So why did I latch onto these aging heroes while drifting from Modest Mouse themselves? Perhaps there are divides of class and self-image at play, perhaps even geography. Maybe I’d be drawn more to Brock’s long tail if I felt less like a mainstream consumer and more like a misfit finding his tribe. Perhaps the sincerity and restrained sophistication of those NPR-dad bands appeal to a different version of me—one that longs for something quieter and more refined than the raw, unruly energy of Modest Mouse. Or maybe the old guard represented by Wilco and the National embodies a version of me I want to be—calm, credible, cultivated.
Some passions in life endure because they bring joy, define who we are, or reach a place inside us we cannot name. They can also surprise us, prompting us to try new things and to push beyond fear. They may even coax us to reconsider the cruise industry itself. Love, after all, is about compromise.
Until Ice Cream Floats, it hadn’t occurred to me that people could still be checking for Modest Mouse in such an intense way. After four days on the Pearl, I understand the Brock worship a bit better. The performances leaned toward the band’s early era, a reminder of how much heat they once generated. Yet what’s more telling than the set lists is the reverence fans bring to these songs and to the musicians who created them. The Floats audience has found something meaningful in Modest Mouse’s music, something that helps them parse life’s mysteries. They carry memories and meanings tied to those songs, and they lean on them in moments of joy and sorrow alike.
Would I feel the same if I’d boarded the Train cruise instead? Probably not. If you’re already a fan of an artist, these cruise experiences tend to deepen that devotion; if you’re merely casual, you may become a bigger fan or you may drift away. But what a nightmare it would be if the music didn’t land. If I’d loved a different song than the one that resonated with me, I’d still feel compelled to respect the people who felt miracles in the performance. For some, hearing a certain track might even be a spiritual moment; for others, it’s an amusing memory. Either way, the ride is real for those who bought in.
***
The beekeeping suit suddenly makes a lot more sense.
When I reconnect with Brock via video call a few weeks after the voyage, he’s carrying a honeycomb into his kitchen and trying to separate beeswax from honey. It strikes me that the beekeeping gear he wore on the Pearl wasn’t just a prop; it’s something he’s actually invested in for real hive work. “I’m a practical guy,” he explains, the sort who squeezes every last use out of an item.
Brock tells me that during our shipboard chat, I caught him in the “hand-wringing” version of the interview, but he ultimately loved the cruise. Sure, the schedule was grueling; yes, he had some awkward run-ins with fans—like the person who wanted to know if he’d perform Modest Mouse’s final show with the late Jeremiah Green for clout. Yet Brock concludes, “I came away from it feeling absolutely fantastic. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. In a couple of years, I probably will.”
In the meantime, he’s readying a new album, his first in five years. He wishes Modest Mouse would release records more quickly, the way you’d slam out ideas in a weekend, first throw. When I ask whether family obligations slow the process, he suggests it’s more about him—owning a studio tempts him to try every idea and then prune back, chasing that variable that could elevate a track. Even though he contends the instinct to experiment is strongest in the first week—perhaps the first day—the urge persists.
Now that he’s back from the cruise, he’s energized by the possibility of new conversations and new music. He can still be prickly, profane, and caustically funny, but there’s a sense that he cares about Modest Mouse and the impact their songs have on listeners.
For the kind of Modest Mouse fan who invested in Ice Cream Floats, an album is not merely a promotional video change on tour, though Brock is excited about the artwork for the new project. It’s a lifeline—these fans are here for the long haul. No matter how campy this cruise may sound in theory, it felt like something truly special for those who truly believed in the band, provided the music entered the room with the respect it deserved.
“It was never supposed to be a good idea,” Brock says with a wry smile. “It started as a joke, like, ‘Wouldn’t that be odd?’ And then you realize you’re the joke, and you’re the punchline. Yet by the end, I thought, ‘No, this is just terrific.’ It’s everything a festival should be for the people who care about it.”
