The subtitle of this album, New, Live, BBC Sessions & Otherwise, makes it sound like your typical odds 'n' sods throw-together job, a clearing house for the half-baked ideas Mice Parade main-man Adam Pierce has lying around his Bubble Core office. Every indie band that endures for any length of time is obligated to release one of these babies; more often than not, the serious fan already has all the decent tracks and the collection is a waste of money. All Roads Lead to Salzburg, however, is an exception to this dodgy tradition.
Instead of a broom pile, All Roads Lead to Salzburg offers a more complete picture of what Mice Parade is all about. While last year's fine Mokoondi showed Adam Pierce to be a master at the one-man-band aesthetic, here we get several opportunities to hear the project as a live unit, and they do not disappoint. The band on the BBC sessions includes Dylan Cristy on vibes, Pierce on cheng (the Chinese zither used so effectively on Mokoondi), Marc Wolf on nylon string guitar, Rob King on keyboards, Doro Tachler on violin, and most importantly, the godlike Doug Scharin on drums and percussion.
It's an unusual mix of instruments, with the violin and cheng lending a Far-East flavor that blends nicely with Western chord voicings and a classical minimalist sense of repetition and structure. The interplay between the musicians is fluid and intuitive. The recording of "Circle One" expands greatly on the studio version with a propulsive sense of joy, and "All Roads Lead to Salzburg" (from the same session) is equally fine. Also notable is the exceptional sound quality of these recordings; the live mix of this large band with the blend of studio and electronic instruments had to be problematic, but the result is clean, clear and appropriate to the detailed music.
More impressive still is the four-part "Open Air Dance," recorded with the same band at another BBC date. Building from a riff laid down on the cheng, the band, shoved forward by the furious drumming of Scharin, explores variation after variation on the opening theme, squeezing melodic juice from a tiny three-note phrase as clouds of vibe harmonics expand and recede. This collective is all about the positive vibe and there's no denying a whiff of 'jam band' is present in the structure of this epic piece. Fortunately, the melodies are short and simple, and the launching point for the soloing is primarily rhythmic, so Mice Parade never approaches instrumental indulgence.
Beyond the live tracks, there are a few experiments that come close to the 'closet cleaning' category, but manage to remain appealing. Among these mish-mashes are "One Road Led to Columbia" and "Circle 2," both pieced together in the Bubble Core office by tweaking and manipulating live fragments via computer, resulting in an interesting digital spin on acoustic sound sources that owes a lot to dub. And the new "Phasen Weise" is a fantastic track that would have been the best thing on Mokoondi, with Pierce handling his usual array of instruments and then layering the haunting multi-track vocals of Doro Tachler on top, doing an odd kind of German folk chant. All Roads Lead to Salzburg is a fine collection and one hell of an advertisement for Mice Parade's live show.
