Was
‘post-rock’ ever a useful term? Like ‘electronica’,
it sometimes seems that it's an incredibly vague term,
hiding a multitude of sins and glories, and frequently
serving to little more than keep some stunning, accessible
and beautiful music penned in to a pseudo-academic,
nerdy, over-serious ghetto by a bunch of proprietorial
dorks. On top of that, music like this lovely, sparkly,
emotionally rich album is so far removed from 'rock'
that the term is completely misleading. OK, something
like, say, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, which uses a
lot of big guitar chords and centres around a rearrangement
of rock structures might warrant the term, but Mice
Parade (anagrammatically AKA Adam Pierce)'s entanglement
of flamenco, ambient, folk and funk with a hint of shoegazing
guitar and indie musing is so light and airy, and has
such a rolling groove that associating it with rock
at all is downright misleading.
Listening to something like this, one has to wonder
if it couldn't reach out to a really wide audience if
it were only played in the right contexts. Already we
have Chris Coco and Rob Da Bank's Blue Room show on
BBC Radio 1, and the fabulous Late Junction and Mixing
It on Radio 3, all of which blend very interesting and
abstracted music with more straightforward chill-out
/ world music / etc – so here's hoping other programmers
see fit to take some pretty music like this out of the
realm of artsy-fartsy serious spectacles, hairslides
and pursed-lipped moodiness.
At the centre of the Mice Parade sound, as on previous
albums, are syncopated funk drumming and rich layering
of strummed and finger-picked acoustic guitars. These
guitars may be indie-ish, almost like some of the more
strung-out tracks on My Bloody Valentine's Isn't
Anything (as on Waterslide), folky (Steady
As She Goes or the waltz time Ground As Cold
As Common) or frantic flamenco (the ending section
of Waterslide). Like Animal
Collective, Pierce has an excellent sense of how
several guitars played together with great precision
– so it's difficult to tell how many instruments
you are hearing – can build up really rich and
warm harmonics. Fizzing sustained keyboard notes help
to pad out this warm sound even more, but Pierce and
Ikuko Harada's deadpan, thoughtful vocals, and occasional
crescendos of more distorted MBV-ish guitar stop it
becoming mindlessly euphoric. Anna Valtysdóttir
(Múm) appears on
Nights Wave, her distinctive pure tones floating
between the parts of one of the rawer beats on the album.
Most of the tracks here were apparently recorded live
in one take, with only minimal digital editing to cut
the lengthier sections down – and the sense of
immediacy and interaction between the players perfectly
balances the razor-sharp precision of the musicianship,
preventing it ever sounding like a technical exercise.
The drumming, by Pierce and Doug Scharin (June Of 44,
HiM) is gleeful, with the skins really spanked despite
the rolling dexterity of the playing; this punchy drum
sound might be a bit raw for people used to more processed
chill-out sounds, but it gives the record an extra kick
and danceability that suggests that more adventurous
DJs could profitably play some of the songs. This is
as good an album as anything in Mice Parade's career,
and a worthy addition to Fat-Cat's ever-diversifying
catalogue. Now if only it could get played to more than
just the moody post-rock types.
Joe Muggs
3.9/5 |
