By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2007

Apparently, you can take the drummer out of the band, but you can't always take the band out of the drummer. Adam Pierce, who has done the honors in such bands as lo-fi popsters the Swirlies, the Dylan Group, HiM and Iceland's múm, went solo in 1996 to begin a series of studio albums under the band name Mice Parade, which happens to be an anagram of Adam Pierce.

Mice Parade's debut, "The True Meaning of Boodleybaye," was genuinely solo and organic, though some critics credited Pierce's crisp drumming and sample-like repetition to electronic sources -- wrongly, it turns out, since Pierce is famously anti-computer and has said he has never used programmed drums on a recording. Over the course of seven albums, collaborators have gradually crept into the mix, and when Pierce hits the road -- he'll be at the Rock and Roll Hotel on Sunday -- it will be with a septet that includes a drummer other than himself.

"It's Doug Scharin of HiM, and he's amazing, so there doesn't need to be any other drummer," Pierce says. On tour, Pierce plays a variety of guitars and ethnic instruments, including a cheng (Chinese harp), but it seems you can't take the drummer out of the bandleader, either. A second set of drums will be on stage, which he will inevitably gravitate to before night's end.

"I shouldn't take a drum set, but I do to remind myself that I'm still a drummer, and I never get to play when I'm not on tour," he says. "We do some double-kit stuff and try and make it fun, not just doubling each other but trying to bounce and play off each other."

The touring Mice Parade generally adopts a more democratic, collective improv approach to the music, made easier by the fact that Scharin, Lansing-Dreiden keyboardist Jay Israelson, classical guitarist Dan Lippel and vibraphonist Dylan Cristy of the Dylan Group are all on Pierce's new self-titled CD, "Mice Parade." Múm's Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir is on the album (and its two predecessors), but the guest vocals on tour will be handled by electronic pop chanteuse Caroline.

Pierce, whose music could be described as post-rock/electronica with trance and ambient elements, says his band includes three newcomers (Caroline, along with guitarist Rob Laakso and multi-instrumentalist Josh McKay) who are "learning everything for the first time. I'm so thankful that they're there -- it makes it so much better. If I record tunes alone, it tends to be kind of stale, and I don't know what's going on; a band makes it come alive."

Doing so when the roots of the music are multi-tracked solo studio recordings in which beats often take precedence in the arrangements can make for rehearsals that are "grueling and horribly long," Pierce says. "It's me remembering what the hell was recorded and relearning everything. It's not like I know how everything goes or how to play it all -- it was done once months ago -- so it's learning how to play everything, and then all of us learning how to play together. And that's where the picky perfectionist [stuff] comes in that might cause some trouble."

That would be recognition of Pierce's reputation for perfectionism, part of the original impetus to do it all himself. "The songs are tricky and [stuff] needs to get right," Pierce offers. "On one level, there's a perfectionist standard going on in terms of wanting to put on a good show and getting the parts right and knowing what's going on with all of us.

"But I've been anti-perfection in a lot of recordings. I used to carry a strict rule about doing each instrument in only one take and not fixing any mistakes but maybe muting them, or not muting them, trying to work around mistakes and call them happy accidents, etc. I never have an idea of what a song should sound like when it's being recorded; I'm always happy to be surprised by it at the end."

Mice Parade's new album, the first recorded at Pierce's new home studio in Upstate New York near Bear Mountain, features such guests as Valtýsdóttir (who toured with Mice Parade from 2003 to 2006), Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, Israelson and Cristy, with whom Pierce started the Dylan Group as a duo, calling their first album "It's All About (rimshots and faulty wiring)." It was released on Pierce's own label, Bubble Core, now dormant; the musician occasionally records and tours with Mice Parade, but these days he is mostly occupied running the American branch of FatCat Records, the British label that's home to such bands as Sigur Rós and the Twilight Sad as well as Mice Parade's opening acts, Tom Brosseau and David Karsten Daniels.

Mice Parade's early efforts were truly solo, but by 2001's "Mokoondi" album, Pierce had formed a band to tour the music. His most recent albums, 2004's "Obrigado Saudade" and 2005's "Bem-Vinda Vontade," found Mice Parade not only upping the vocal elements (including Pierce's own hushed leads) but moving toward a more accessible pop-influenced sound. Besides the use of collaborators, the most noticeable progression has been the increasing presence of melody amid the intricate cornerstone rhythms that confirm Pierce's percussion roots.

On the latest CD's mournfully atmospheric "Tales of Las Negras," Sadier's stately vocals contrast with clattering percussion and Spanish acoustic guitar arpeggios. On other tracks -- Valtýsdóttir on the ethereal, childlike "Double Dolphins on the Nickel" or Pierce himself on "The Last Ten Homes," "Satchelaise" and "The Nights After Fiction" -- melody seems to be fighting rhythm for ascendance -- hum vs. drum and strum, as it were.

"I know what you're talking about, and it's probably my failure that it comes across as a fight," Pierce says. "Maybe I failed a bit more on the new record than I have on some other records. It's nothing conscious, it's just being a drummer and being into the rhythm of everything that's going on. Whatever instrument's playing, I'm very curious of its rhythmic additions. I hope it doesn't get too cluttered sometimes. Maybe it does."

Clutter has sometimes been an issue. With the ever-expanding capabilities and diminishing costs of home recording equipment, the temptation of multi-tracking is to overload rather than to simplify. Still, Pierce insists it's "not the freeing aspect you might think. I don't know anything about modern music technology. The only equipment I personally know how to use is mixing boards and outboard effects and the cues and [a vintage reel-to-reel] tape machine. I don't know how to use ProTools or any computer program."

Actually, Pierce says he did use ProTools on the new album "when my tape machine wasn't working and I needed to use a computer by deadline. I would call a buddy of mine, and he'd bring it over and help me get it done. But with all past records and in terms of life experience, technology does not enter into it because I've always been an ignorant dinosaur."

But a most musical one.

Mice Parade, Tom Brosseau and David Karsten Daniels

Appearing Sunday at the Rock and Roll Hotel

Sounds like: Post-rock electronica energized by a live band.