Nights Wave & Passing and Galloping - Mice Parade
Bem-Vinda Vontade by Mice Parade
So you're stuck in traffic in Antwerp, and you're listening to the second song of the album linked above, and you're wondering why you even try to write your own stuff at all. Why don't you just become a Mice Parade cover band?
Probably because it's too hard, but the transition between the songs Nights Wave and Passing and Galloping is so heart-breaking, so beautiful and it gives me everything I need from music: emotion, cleverness and a sound that fills up the complete ear.
It starts wonderfully. The complex, slightly overdriven crunchy drums of Nights Wave kick it off. A groove, with an off-putting metric scheme*, combined and contrasted with the softly whispering dulcit voice of Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. She sings something, and I don't know what she sings, but it means a lot. It's incomprehensible, but it's not meaningless. It touches without words. When the song shifts in feel, she makes place for Adam Pierce, the anagramical leader of the band, who's words are clear. He sings some very true lines, his favourite scribling in a bathroom stall. When the line comes up in the song, we hear Kristín again, singing together with Adam, because the line was written by two people, one adding words to the others original message.
"
You've seen it all
Except what happens when you call
The one you overlooked for a good time
"
This is a vandalism of a vandalism. He could have mixed up lots of things, to a similar effect, and it would have turned out fine, but this is simply his. The mixing of the harsh drums with the soft voices. The use of existing tropes and habits, and twisting and turning them around. The editing of a gross line on a bathroom stall wall, adding words that mean nothing on their own. Put together this forms poetry.
He does the same in the transition to Passing and Galloping. The two songs do not always appear together, but the way they are placed after each other on Bem-Vinda Vontade illustrates perfectly what I'm trying to say. Nights Wave ends in these twinkly, small, bell like arpeggios. Those chords then get repeated by a heavily overdriven guitar that sneaks into every crevice of your ear and fills the whole cochlea with sound. The drums go completely crazy, just banging on the toms, passing and galloping from ear to ear in an awesome stereo setup.
In this way Mice Parade fulfils all my auditory needs. When I want something soft to listen to, I can listen to Mice Parade, and when I need something hard, I can listen to Mice Parade, often even to the same song. They bring me shoegazy post-rock ish music, but throw a lovely bridge with latin rhythms in the middle. That's all I need.
And then I wonder. Why do I even try to write my own stuff at all? Why don't I just become a Mice Parade cover band.
*For those who care: In my view the metric scheme of the song switches between bars of 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4. The intro consists of four bars of 3/4, one of 5/4 and again four of 3/4. So the general feel of the intro is in 3/4, with two extra beats in the middle. The bar in 5/4 is elongated to extend the ringing of the open hi-hat. What is expected is a return to 3/4, maybe after an upbeat, because there's already been one in the third bar of the groove. What follows, however, is an upbeat of two beats, instead of one, and only after that the trusted 3/4 returns. (But can you still trust it?) The first upbeat is a drum fill and the other a guitar chord with a dominant function. This is what throws you off. The first upbeat would logically lead to the expected return to 3/4, as has happened before, but it gets extended. It goes on into an extra upbeat in the guitar, which also sounds like it could be the first beat of a new section. This way you are no longer certain where any bar starts. Are you on the first beat, or on another? This weird quirk, just an extra beat, throws the whole groove off.
