Mice Parade interview

So, as it turned out, I was only moderately into Mice Parade's latest album, and the interview with Adam Pierce didn't go well at all...but you know, we can't be brilliant ALL the time, can we?

Anyway, my interview with Pierce ran yesterday at PopMatters...check it out. By the way, I don't know why he's so snotty about 1-4-5 chord progressions. I love that Frightened Rabbit album he's referring to.


No Flamenco: An Interview with Mice Parade’s Adam Pierce

Seven albums and 15 years into his career as Mice Parade, Adam Pierce refuses to be pigeonholed, hemmed in or even defined by critical expectations.


By Jennifer Kelly 9 April 2013

“There’s absolutely no flamenco on this record,” says Mice Parade’s Adam Pierce, who, it must be said, is a little touchy about the whole concept of world music influences. He has, indeed, studied flamenco guitar, played Chinese harps and based the percussion on one song on his new album Candela on a beat by Thomas Mapfumo.

Rather, he suggests, the new record is more of an indie rock album. He’s even appropriated the 1-4-5 chord structures favored by Frightened Rabbit (he mixed their new Pedestrian Verse) into his toolbox. “Mice Parade would intentionally use non-traditional chord progressions,” he says. “But I worked with a lot of bands—Frightened Rabbit for instance—that have 1-4-5 in every song. And I just figured it would be fun…”

“People always ask me about this world music, other music, but that was never a goal,” says Pierce. “I never had that conscious thought. It’s true that I love music from all around the world, I think it’s a shame that more of us don’t listen to more of that kind of stuff. I guess that whatever you listen to will naturally sort of happen in your songwriter.“


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