Mice Parade "Mice Parade"

Artist: Mice Parade
Album: Mice Parade
Label: FatCat
Release date: 8 May 2007
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock

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Tracklisting:
01. Sneaky Red
02. Tales Of Las Negras [Feat. Laetitia Sadier]
03. The Last Ten Homes
04. Snow
05. Double Dolphins On The Nickel [Feat. Kristin Anna Valtýsdóttir]
06. Satchelaise
07. Swing
08. Circle None
09. The Nights After Fiction
Total running time: 35' 29"

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[Mice Parade - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"For the uninitiated, it bears mentioning that Adam Pierce is the multi-instrumentalist at the core of Mice Parade. As with all albums made under that moniker, Mice Parade is also made up of a steady cast of song-to-song contributors such as vocalist Kristin Anna Valtysdottir (Múm), percussionist Doug Scharin (HiM, June of '44), Dylan Christy (Dylan Group), Jay Israelson (Lansing-Dreiden), and vocalist Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab).

The eponymous release is the group's seventh album, and the first to be recorded in Pierce's new upstate New York home studio. Whereas the central focus of previous albums such as Ramda (1999) and Mokoondi (2001) was the meeting point of post-rock, electronics, and ethnic musics, the most recent works have Pierce growing in vocal presence and compositional precision. This album continues a trend of previous years - especially with Bem-Vinda Vontade (2005) - in that songs are greatly based around the rhythmic interaction of nylon-stringed acoustic guitars and powerful, fill-laden and ethnically-tinged drum set parts.

Mice Parade finds Pierce and his cast of contributors composing nine tunes of generally shorter times and more concise themes. On past efforts, Mice Parade compositions were often built from the ground up on one riff or drum pattern, eventually layering on complementary instrumental pieces one by one. Here most tracks begin by revealing their full form and either toying with dynamic levels or moving straight to new melodies and ideas. Less common to the music of Mice Parade is Pierce's previously signature method of experimenting with sounds before reaching a compositional climax. Nowhere else is this more clear than the album's opener, "Sneaky Red," with its four-count staccato drum fill attack, which leads directly into the skip-step rhythm performed by acoustic guitar, drum set, and vibraphone.

While Mice Parade cuts off some of the enjoyable excess, it hosts undeniably catchy and sometimes breakbeaty drum patterns, Pierce's low-toned and growingly appealing vocal styling, and overall a musical style that is its own - danceable, cultural, underground, and intelligent (look to the Minutemen-referencing "Double Dolphins On the Nickel"). For my money, there are few more underrated or enjoyable collectives. And although Mice Parade isn't necessarily the group's paramount album, it certainly makes their stock soar high." [source]

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