ALBUM REVIEW: Nighttime Stories – Pelican
Somewhere along the line of their eighteen year career, Chicago’s PELICAN picked up an unenviable and unwarranted tag; they’re ‘boring’. Naturally, their melodically dense and chronologically expansive instrumental tracks weed out casual listeners and those who don’t find a home under the ‘post metal fan’ umbrella, but for many their unhurried explorations of repetition and natural growth lacked the vitality and memorable riffs of peers that include ISIS, NEUROSIS and RUSSIAN CIRCLES.
After a six year near-hiatus, the quartet have returned with a record that will see naysayers forced to eat every superior sneering syllable. Nighttime Stories isn’t so much a return to form as it is a blossoming, the band emerging from a chrysalis having gestated something vibrant and vital. Opener WST eases in with chiming, gentle acoustics, and an air of anticipation ramped up by glowering bass beneath. Wandering and wistful, ‘so far so PELICAN,’ it slowly builds with tentative tom taps, added to layer by layer before dazzling instrumentation drops out steadily. Midnight and Mescaline is where the curve balls start coming; driving, upbeat, almost stoner rock riffs persist as guitars spiral off to the side, anchored by Bryan Herweg’s undeniable bass rumble. Pushing upwards inexorably, moving through grinding riffs and chugging tremolo, the track groans fit to burst with ‘blink and you’ll miss ‘em’ ideas, closing on machine gun double kick work and locked-in guitar gallops.
Abyssal Plain bounces and swaggers with an alt-rock tempo curiously familiar to AT THE DRIVE IN fans, constantly moving around a stabbing one/two guitar riff that’s buoyed on the back of blast beats. Suffused with swinging movement, guitars skitter and scrape, looping into hypnotic repetition before opening out into broad scope, irresistible rhythms. Cold Hope rings out with stoner chords, descending through a thicket of clanging cymbal chaos, locking into a deep mean groove that bristles with RUSSIAN CIRCLES bravado. Delving into a destructive, hefty chug overlain with trippy guitar shimmer, it breaks down into shuddering, messy atonality and spacey guitar rounds nailed fast by an ugly bass groove.
It Stared At Me burbles with a clean bass drive and twinkling guitars, sounding like a neo-western soundtrack. Splashing cymbals build into an easy roll, bulked out by additional percussion, meticulously layered, distant and dreamy. The title track wrong-foots with jarring atonal piano, breaking into a droning, mid-paced groove with stabs of spiralling guitar. Massive chords cease their repetition to drop into a filthy bass-led chug, ponderous drums and squeals of mechanical guitar sounding like digital noise before opening into huge, quivering riffs before lurching with a seasick gait to a close. Arteries Of Blacktop switches from huge bass swing to a plodding, determined riff, Larry Herweg’s snare-based groove keeping an unstoppable pace. Layers disintegrate then coalesce, descending through snarling guitar into brooding chords, sparse drumming filling the empty space while manic guitars spider around the edges.
Closer Full Moon, Black Water echoes the structure of the opener with dry, strummed acoustics before bursting into an achingly triumphant riff, embracing the epic, soaring vibes of ‘classic PELICAN’ before drifting into a dreamy, effects laden close. While the building blocks of the PELICAN sound are still firmly in place, they’ve been used to create almost entirely new architecture. Dripping with energy, packed with skill and ideas, PELICAN assuredly open a second chapter in their tale.
Rating: 8/10
Nighttime Stories is set for release on June 7th via Southern Lord.
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