Indie rock band Modest Mouse's Friday set at the Palladium was a dizzying, unrelenting affair, one which paused very little, produced a wall of sound so thick it was nearly impenetrable, and was plagued by a bad vocal mix that made it difficult for the unfamiliar to differentiate songs.

It was also an electrifying, bracing display of musicianship, one which revealed the secret to the paragon of contemporary rock's success: That underneath the veneer and window-dressing of modernity, the building blocks of each song are ripped straight from the roots of American music, recontextualized and made fresh again for a new audience.

The show began without fanfare as the band launched into a fast-paced, high-energy rendition of “Dark Center of the Universe,” a meditation on people's capacity for selfishness, that commanded the audience's attention immediately. The song moved at a steady clip, with Isaac Brock's vocals constrained, and the guitar coming to the fore, which lent a sense of contrast when the band moved on to the bass- and percussion-driven “Missed the Boat.”

But really, the show hit its stride with the cathartic, “Poison the Well,” the crowd invigorated and singing along to the refrain, “I'm not trying to push you around, well/I'm not trying to push you around.” It was here – with Lisa Molinaro's viola cutting across the thick wall of Jeremiah Green and Ben Massarella's percussion, like citrus cutting through a heavy sauce – that the listener could get a sense at not just the scale of the enormous band, but the depth of the textures it was weaving. Modest Mouse creates an enormously elaborate sound, and there is more to excavate with each passing song, but each song passed so quickly, it was difficult to savor each discovery.

“Poison the Well,” like many songs Friday night, came to an abrupt end, leaving a momentary silence, disturbed only by the scrape of metal around its edges, then a beat of guitar noodling, as if finding one's footing, and then a sudden launch into the raucous fan-favorite, “Lampshades on Fire.” The packed house cheered and bounced in approval.

A few things became clear as the adrenaline high of “Lampshades” fell away, most notably the effectiveness of Brock's vocal style. There's a casualness about Brock on stage, a sort of point of calm amid the orchestrated cacophony. He generally spits lyrics in short, bullet-like bursts, to great affect (although again, the mix was stymieing his efforts), and though he's capable of belting or escalating to a scream, those instances become almost startling.

Likewise, when the band launched into “Grey Ice Water,” with its swamp-groove bluegrass underpinnings, one could begin to hear how much of this music is built upon a foundation of rock, blues and Americana. It's what connects the indelibly contemporary music to a greater tradition and which gives it its sense of immediate familiarity. You can hear the echoes of what's come before, made new. This thought haunts the countrified “Autumn Beds,” which for all its delicacy is essentially – for all its indie rock veneer – a Johnny Cash-style death row ballad. The same goes for “Satin in A Coffin,” which has an Appalachian porch foot-stomper lurking in its bones. The effect on listeners is autonomic: They have to move, to tap their feet, at least. To dance. The audience complied, with glee.

Rocketing toward the end of the main set, the tone took a turn back toward straight-up rock 'n' roll with the garage band fuzz introducing “(Expletive) In Your Cut,” and the upbeat, crowd-pleasing “Dashboard,” which had multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso trading the synthesizer for a trumpet, transforming the band's entire feel. The heaviness that had pervaded much of the set was suddenly engulfed by an inignorable brightness.

That brightness, however, was a bit of a set up, as the set gave way to “Dramamine,” which built a steady rise of notes that seemed to spiral toward the Palladium's ceiling, curling like smoke, only to then transition into a viola-driven sensation of falling that carried across a couple songs, landing in “Sleepwalking,” which feels like the dark shadow of a Beach Boys tune, that shadow you only see in sunlight.

“Sleepwalking” gave way to “I Came As A Rat,” with its echoes of blues-rock guitar and Led Zeppelin references: “I don't know but I've been told/You'll never die and you never grow old,” taking those starting points and taking them someplace entirely different. The band closed out the set with the blistering “Invisible,” bringing the audience to a frenzy before ending the song on a sudden, jarring note and exiting the stage.

There was some confusion then, exacerbated by what seemed an exceedingly long delay before the band returned for an encore with the propulsive “Satellite Skin” and then “Wicked Campaign.” The encore ended with a rendition of “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” with the bass and dense percussion ratcheting up the intensity, before closing on the almost-psychedelic, “Cowboy Dan,” which seared and burned, before escalating again and then, eventually fizzling out. It was an odd, even surprising end to the set, but it was an odd and surprising sort of show.