Here in the post-post-rock diaspora, the original post-rockers keep getting mellower. Sure, Jim O'Rourke just announced a new free jazz/noise rock project, but Archer Prewitt is well into his Cat Stevens phase, and even John McEntire is picking up a credit on the new Bright Eyes. Meanwhile, it's been nearly a decade since former Swirlies member Adam Pierce launched his anagrammatical Mice Parade project, and its seventh album, and first self-titled, happens to be its most traditionally song-oriented.

Mice Parade fans by now probably should've grown used to this once-instrumental outfit's increasing use of vocals and lyrics, a fixture on the last two albums, 2005's Bem-Vinda Vontade and 2004's Obrigado Saudade. On Mice Parade, those elements remain a sticking point, even as Pierce's intricate drumming, expressive guitar strums, and use of non-traditional instruments continues to impress. "The Tales of Las Negras" is the only unalloyed songwriting success, as cooing vocals from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier augment one of the album's finest instrumental backdrops, with whirling nylon-string arpeggios layered against clattering breakbeats sure to be mistaken as electronic. A contribution from Múm's Kristin Anna Valtysdottir on punningly titled "Double Dolphins on the Nickel" is sure to be particularly divisive: Her infant-like purr moves from Icelandic to English, accompanied by Pierce's dramatic, big-screen guitars.

As with Portland, Ore., indie-rockers Menomena, many of Mice Parade's compositions start with drums. Pierce's clattering percussion is the focal point on opener "Sneaky Red", even as acoustic guitar gives way to shoegaze-infused noise, marimbas, and flatly voiced lyrics like, um, "Girl, I miss you now much more/ Than I ever did before." The drums are more subdued on acoustic-rocker "The Last Ten Homes", but joined by clapping noises for the song's plaintive instrumental packages, they lend some needed heft to Pierce's lonely tale of a man talking to the picture on his wall ("hey there, picture, what are you hangin' on?").

Mice Parade still finds Pierce working in a distinctive space, less jazzy than fellow post-rock vets the Sea & Cake but more atmospherically nuanced than typical acoustic singer/songwriters, but it's hardly the most appropriate release to bear the Mice Parade name. Knotty, minimalist guitar lines dominate later tracks like meditative "Circle None" or folksy "Swing". Pierce also occasionally turns a good lyric or two, such as on "Satchelais", where he puts a heartbreaking (heartbroken?) twist on an old lullaby: "By the way, the ring was made of glass."