Mice Parade – What It Means To Be Left-Handed

Ever since their inception in 1998, Adam Pierce’s Mice Parade have emblemised bold ambition, baulking any calls to conform with a melting pot of influence being reworked through Pierce’s more than able eyes. With their eight studio album, Pierce and Co. continue to mess with convention, with the disparate mix of Old Hat’s hyper-hypnotic loop finding perfect symbiosis in What it Means to Be Left-Handed’s polarised extremes, the heart-swelling beauty of Recover visiting Yo La Tengo’s most tender introspections amidst a malarkey of mistimed guitars, and Fortune of Folly untangling a beautiful strand from its instrumental ramshackle.

Of course, as with Mice Parade’s preceding output, with daring, there comes the danger of a fall, and What it Means… unquestionably takes the odd tumble, with the confused ambitions of opener Kapunda, and the shop-bought indie of Couches and Carpets. However over the course, such digressions barely register amidst an album of scattered gems. [Paul Neeson]