The Lonesome Crowded West is the second studio album by American rock band Modest Mouse, released on November 18, 1997, by Up Records.

[2] Described as having a "white trash" aesthetic,[3] "The Lonesome Crowded West received positive reviews from critics, and appeared on several lists of the best albums of the 1990s.

The album was reissued by Isaac Brock's Glacial Pace label in 2014, along with Modest Mouse's 1996 debut This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About.

Blake Butler of AllMusic assessed that the album alternates between "dark and pounding thrashers" and "quiet, brooding [acoustic]" tracks.

[20] Sam Hockley-Smith, in a retrospective review for Stereogum, refers to The Lonesome Crowded West as "the album that made Modest Mouse a great band instead of just a good one" and writes that the primary theme of disillusionment in Brock's lyrics is "not pretty, but it's honest, and that honesty makes it beautiful, like Modest Mouse were desperately trying — and failing — to hold onto that last bit of naiveté.