Mice Parade have been a lot of things in their 12-plus-year career: a solo project for Swirlies/Dylan Group member Adam Pierce; a lo-fi IDM outfit; a post-rock mainstay; a welcome home for chanteuse collaborators like Laetitia Sadier and Múm's Kristin Anna Valtysdottir; an ambient instrumental group; and, most recently, a creator of more glossily produced indie rock songs. This project's latest collection, What It Means to Be Left-Handed, continues in the vein of 2007's self-titled LP, in that every song features vocals, choruses, and pop melodies. It's a move even further away from Mice Parade's noisy, knotty beginnings. Though Pierce's percussive virtuosity has been the lone constant through all of Mice Parade's stylistic changes, on this new album it is less a driving force, ceding power to the delightful melodies created by arpeggiated string instruments and vocals. In doing so, Mice Parade have completed their transformation into a more traditional rock band, but luckily they sidestep sounding commonplace by finding bliss in this newfound structure.
What It Means to Be Left-Handed is an album marked by the uptempo musical traditions of faraway places, from West African highlife to Brazilian Tropicália and Spanish flamenco. It's not that Mice Parade hasn't explored music from other cultures before-- 2001's Mokoondi is steeped in the sounds of the Far East thanks to its use of the cheng, a Chinese harp, and as its name announces, 2004's Obrigado Saudade, incorporates elements of Brazilian music to a gorgeous, airy effect. But they never sounded quite this omnivorous. Aside from opening track "Kupanda", which, with its bouncy, polyrhythmic guitar- and kora-anchored melody and Swahili vocals (courtesy of Rwandan/Ugandan-descended singer Somi), successfully works within one specific world music tradition, Pierce mostly bends and transforms the inflections of his international influences to fit inside his American pop music structures. "Couches & Carpets" is a spare, rhythmically driven track buoyed by the rasgueado guitars of flamenco, "In Between Times" breathes warmth into a cool, fuzzy shoegaze foundation with a hot-blooded, sing-along chorus and a clap-happy/trebly-guitar highlife breakdown, and "Fortune of Folly" melts its West African dueling-guitar intro into a sparse pool of ticky-tacky percussion and minimalist arpeggios that becomes a base for some deadpan 1990s indie rock vocals.
If there is an influence on the album greater than Pierce's musical passport, then it's probably his high school record collection. The moments that aren't globe-trotting are traveling in time, back to the classic Massachusetts college rock of the late 80s and early 90s (see: Sebadoh, Buffalo Tom, the Pixies), which was marked by brooding vocals, pop melodies buried in guitar grit, and sparse arrangements. The choice of the Lemonheads' "Mallo Cup" as a one of the album's two covers (the other is a drowsy, bittersweet version of Tom Brosseau's "Mary Anne") seems apt, as Pierce's sensitive baritone is a dead ringer for Evan Dando's, not just on that track, but on the entire latter half of the record. Like Dando, Pierce is enamored of girlish, babydoll-voiced singers. On this album, contributions come from Gregory and the Hawk's Meredith Godreau and Temporary Residence-signed singer Caroline Lufkin. The latter adds sweetness and whimsy to his deeper vocal malaise and recalls the It's a Shame About Ray-era duets by Dando and the similarly elfin-voiced Juliana Hatfield.
Overall, the combination of outward-looking and backward-leaning influences on What It Means to Be Left-Handed makes for a pleasing combination of slacker indie rock ennui and joyous, ravenous culture-borrowing. So often, casual listeners give up on a band after a handful of reliably good releases, sensing that the group isn't going to change or that they've already heard everything the artist has to offer. But this album proves that Mice Parade are still capable of not only surprising but also of getting better as they grow.
