What It Means to Be Left-Handed

What It Means to Be Left-Handed contains more ideas than most guitar bands muster in their entire careers and will certainly consolidate Pierce's core cult audience.

What it Means to Be Left-Handed is just that: a diverse assortment of refreshing new music from a band that has already developed and progressed their chops. It's a joyful occasion and for Mice Parade; a loud celebration down the street, rodents and all.

The 13 songs on What It Means to Be Left-Handed are all, in their own way, enjoyable. The ideas and collaborations on display are impressive, as is the stylistic range. But there's still a bit of cohesion missing there--something that makes What It Means to Be Left-Handed feel more like a collection of individually good ideas and less like a singular artistic statement.

The sparkling solo project of multi-instrumentalist Adam Pierce, Mice Parade specializes in chilled indie arpeggios that swell with craftsmanship. We can now add to that description "crunchy sunshine," in the case of Pierce's third effort What It Means to Be Left-Handed.

Pierce is clearly most comfortable when working in hybrid idioms that challenge preconceived indie-rock formats. When he is operating within those very constraints, the results are far less exciting. Luckily, this album tends to favour his natural operating zone.

What It Means To Be Left-Handed is amply adorned with Pierce's distinctive improvisatory drum stylings, with each rim hit and snare taking on a melodic spirit of its own, whilst never intruding. His kit-work is a baffling contradiction of smooth and jagged, providing a solid backdrop whilst playfully interacting with dense acoustic guitar textures or washy post-rock atmospheres.

The album also hints at bossa nova and jazz but never abandons the post-rock sounds that are the band's forte. The most inviting Mice Parade effort to date.

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.