Heads up to the coveters of everything soft and transporting: here's a delicately crafted new pillow for your collection. For this side project with collaborator Doro Tachler, Adam Pierce relinquishes the mellowest, most tender moments of his recently-released Mice Parade album and allows the texture of the acoustic instruments being plucked clack and resonate in a completely thoughtful, soothing way. This is music for frayed nerves that's just evocative enough to fuel some of those elusive, vaguely transcendent moments strolling or on public transportation. Music like this puts the passing world behind glass for you, making it possible for one to feel blissfully detached and almost infinitely receptive at the same time.
Igloo isn't as strong as the versatile, Tortoise-comparison challenging Obrigado Saudade, but the guitar work is decidedly similar in technique. Circular fingerpicking set to trance-like melodic figures characterizes the gentle workouts of both "A Ye Yo" and "Ships That Pass in the Night." "Frogs" is a sweet, bouncy, low-key bossa nova number that Miss Tachler utilizes her native tongue of German for background vocals, while Pierce's singing sounds like a slightly weathered Mark Kozelek. "Found" is also a more traditional, song-oriented number until the last minute or so, which contains another insistent circular guitar figure. Altogether, what you've got is some nice, floaty, meditative modulation that raises above its somewhat plain structure due to an intimate, dusty immediacy that permeates from the highly intuitive playing on display.
I like to think of this record as a cool, fresh pillow that buoys the delicate art of headphone listening to relieve stress and disenchantment. Pierce may not be changing the world with this minted headrest, but he's putting an eloquent and delectable feather in a cap that's practically a Native American headdress by now. If anyone sees him, tell him to keep up the good work, because this caliber of mood music is rarer than people give it credit for.
1. Cricket
2. Flashback
3. Found
4. Frog
5. A Ye Yo
6. In the Attic
7. Nightkitchen
8. Ships That Pass in the Night
More about: Igloo
