Mice Parade - What It Means to Be Left Handed

Originally Posted on CLUAS

Review Snapshot: With ‘What It Means to Be Left Handed’, Adam Pierce and his Mice Parade have made an album full of worldly influences and a list of guest performers that is the stuff of any indie kids wet dream. Pierce once again exceeds expectations with the records many layers and wonderful production, which take the listener on an intoxicating musical rollercoaster well worth the admission fee.

The Cluas Verdict? 8 out of 10

Full Review: The term 'less is more' is certainly not one Adam Pierce makes his music by. His Mice Parade return with the boldly sprawling and intricate 'What It Means to Be Left Handed', a record crammed to the hilt with worldly influences.

Taking these influences from everything from Flamenco and West African Jazz right through to Shoegaze and Indie Rock, Pierce has enlisted artists as diverse as Swahili vocalist Somi, Meredith Godreau - aka Gregory & The Hawk - and members of the Japanese bands Clammbon and Toe, to bring this heady mix together.

The album's opener Kupanda (listen to it below) is an infectiously, vibrant showcase of worldbeat with beautiful kora strings and swaying African drums blended with Somis gorgeous melodic vocal. This really sets the tone for the musical journey the album intends to take the listener on.

The elation spills into the next track 'In Between Times', where regular collaborator Caroline Lufkin's pixie-like vocals weave sweetly around Pierce's sombre spoken words. Flowing seamlessly on its journey the album's next real couple of highlights are 'Recover' and 'Old Hat'. Recover, with its exquisitely layered guitars over hushed vocals, is backed by amazing percussion from Pierce showing a master of his craft at work. This is followed by the hypnotic 'Old Hat' which again uses layered strings, only this time accompanied by dreamy piano and electronics making these two tracks very cosy bedfellows indeed

The stand out track on the album comes in the form of Tokyo Late Night, a hauntingly, sublime piece of electronica featuring accompaniment by members of post rock stalwarts Toe. The track cements Pierce's place as one of the most exciting producers doing the rounds at the moment and showcases his almost fearless attempts at appropriately fusing different genres.

While running the risk at times of trying to do just a touch too much with this record, 'Mallo Cup' and 'Fortune of Folly' seem to sway slightly from the rest of the album, Pierce and his band on the whole do bring it together very well. It will be interesting however to see if they can translate it so well to the live stage on their current tour, only time will tell. For now though Mice Parade's latest work is well worth a listen or two.

Interview: Pg.lost

With their soaring guitar riffs and dark, beautiful melodies Swedish post rockers Pg.Lost are definitely a band it’s hard not to like. Their mesmerizing latest album In Never Out has become one of my favourite records of the year and one that cannot be recommended highly enough. Drop-d recently got a chance to speak to the band about their recent tour of the far east, the music scene in Sweden and more.

Drop-d: So guys how did the band start?

Pg.lost: It started just as a fun thing to do on the side of our other projects. Kristian was in the band “Eskju Divine” and Mattias and Gustav in a band called “My Idea of Fun”. We all knew each other from school but in their senior year of high school Mattias and Kristian started to hang out more and more. Eventually we started to have late night jams, with Rickard the bass player from “My Idea of Fun” on drums.

When it came to our first live show we were one person short. Rickard was doing his military service at the time and couldn’t participate but we decided to do it anyway as a trio. The band now consisted of: Kristian on bass, Gustav on guitar and Mattias on drums. The show went really good and the overwhelming review in the local paper made us think that this was maybe something more than just a fun side project.

The year that followed we tried some different styles with another friend, Gustaf, as a stand in on the drums before we recruited Martin and recorded our first demo just in time for New Year’s Eve -04/-05, and that is how the line-up is today: Kristian on bass and vocals, Gustav and Mattias on guitars and Martin on drums.

Drop-d: What influenced your musical direction, as in why do you think you play the music you play?

Pg.l: We played together just for the fun of it and didn’t have any plans of making this band into something serious so we don’t know really. All of us listened to some post-rock when we started; except for Martin, everything was new to him. No one of us was comfortable with or wanted to sing, we tried that for a while later on and that didn’t work, so we played whatever came most natural to us and tried not to think so much.

That is in principle how we still make music. Influences come from everywhere.

Drop-d: Your latest album In Never Out appears to take a darker tone compared to your other releases. Why do you think this is?

Pg.l: The songs felt darker, more destructive and maybe not as hopeful as our other songs. This was not something we had planned, the songs just turned out that way.

I’m not sure if people would interpret the dark feeling as anger but I think something has made us angry when we made the songs. It’s quite liberating to be really pissed sometimes.

Drop-d: I think In Never Out is a fantastic record, can you tell us anything about the next one, when do you think it will be out?

Pg.l: Thank you for the kind words. It’s too early, even for us, to speculate how it’s going to be because we haven’t really started with the next album yet. We only know what we want to do differently from the other records in terms of the actual making of it. The direction of it, and the production we don’t know. Maybe more playful and daring or maybe we’ll try to make it even darker than In Never Out.

It’ll have to take the time it takes but hopefully we’ll have something finished by late 2011 early 2012.

Until then we want to promote a compilation album that we’re going to be on together with a bunch of other great bands. We got contacted by Mirza from the band Arms & Sleepers, whom we have played with a couple of times in Europe. He asked if we wanted to be a part of this project called “Music Against Hunger” and we said we would be honoured. Here’s some more info about that:

https://usa.wfp.org/campaign/music-against-hunger

Drop-d: The band recently toured the far east, what was that like? Was it difficult to organise?

Pg.l: It was all fixed by the tour manager we had and it worked out extremely well. But then again he worked for like four months making it happen so… All we had to do was get the visas, buy the flight tickets there and back and get him as much material for promotion as we could.

We didn’t know at all what to expect so we tried to keep our expectations low and think that if it would be like shit we at least would have toured and seen China, something that not to many bands in our genre have done before.

Drop-d: What is the music scene like in Sweden at the moment?

Pg.l: Maybe we can’t really give it justice because we live in a rather small city with a limited supply of live shows and innovative artists. It’s different in the bigger cities like Stockholm or Gothenburg. Many times that is how it feels; that Sweden lacks really innovative artists. Something gets really popular and soon everything’s starts to sound the same. Well, it’s not only our hometown that’s small, the whole country is. It’s like it is everywhere I guess. The music that gets most space in media gets most space everywhere.

It’s of course not all bad. Sweden has generally been quite good at producing high quality music and bands since long and that doesn’t die out just like that.

Drop-d: Have you ever played Ireland before?

Pg.l: No. We actually haven’t been to Ireland… not yet!

Drop-d: Any plans to play over here in the future?

Pg.l: We have plans to play all over… so of course we’d love to do that but nothing is planned at the moment. If you have any good contacts, hook us up!

Drop-d: What bands are you guys listening to?

Pg.l: Our taste in music is quite diverse within the band. Of course we listen and like a lot of the same bands but at the same time some of us like bands/music that the others just can’t stand.

(The band later emailed on a list, nice guys!!)

Martin

Mutiny Within – Mutiny Within

Opeth – Watershed
Copeland - You are my sunshine

Mattias

Beach House - Teen Dream
Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
Kidcrash – Snacks

Gustav

Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall

Villagers – Becoming a Jackal

Adebisi Shank – This is the Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank

Kristian

Black Keys – Brothers
Radiohead – Ok Computer
Queens of the Stone Age – Rated R

Drop-d: Any advice for new bands starting out?

Pg.l: Make music that you really want to make and don’t compromise. Not said that you shouldn’t listen to each other or what other people say but don’t stop until your gut feeling says it is good. And focus on the music primarily, especially in the beginning. If other people like it then things will start to move on its own…

Drop-d: Cheers pg.lost!!