Pelican
Flickering Resonance
RUN FOR COVER
Pelican were supposedly surprised that listeners deemed them a metal act when they initially formed in the early aughts. As influenced by Hum and Christie Front Drive as they were by doom, industrial, and early post-metal, their brand of instrumental rock doesn’t always sound particularly metallic, perhaps due to the band’s obsession with melody. Mogwai is perhaps the closest musical comparison, although there’s something even more pop-oriented about Pelican, who frequently use lead guitars like vocals and follow head-nodding grooves that grip a hold of your consciousness in a trance-like fashion, which has an effect that sits somewhere between krautrock and house music.
Approaching their 25th anniversary, the band have just released their seventh studio album, Flickering Resonance. It’s their first in six years, and the band simply sounds delighted to still be playing music together. The tone of these eight tracks feels triumphant, like ascending the peak of the mountain that adorns the LP’s cover. Opener “Gulch” sets the tone, letting loose a series of major-key guitar leads atop a chugging rhythm section that will plaster huge smiles on head-banging faces. “Specific Resonance” is just as stoked, flexing its beaming grin and muscular riffs on a grand, eight-and-a-half-minute canvas that ebbs and flows like the tides. This mood is never far from Pelican’s mind—“Flickering Stillness” starts off with somber, doom-laden guitars but segues into something more resplendent, like the evening dark giving way to the morning light.
Pelican aren’t exactly pushing themselves here, and they have no real need to. They’re in the lineage of great rock bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Slayer that have a singular sound they need only make the most minor of tweaks to. Their unfussy, relatively raw (by post-metal standards) approach has sometimes been criticized as undercooked, but this just tends to reflect the band’s pared-back approach. On Flickering Resonance, tracks like “Pining for Ever” utilize dense rock riffs and rhythms that are extremely simple, however they’re tied together with such compelling structural nous and clever, emotionally resonant layers of guitar melodies that they transcend a lack of technicality.
A triumphant return from its creators, Flickering Resonance succeeds because it feels so natural, as though you’re sitting in Pelican’s rehearsal room listening to the most intuitive and engrossing jam session you’ve ever heard. Bang your head and smile—this is metal of the most universal and soul-refreshing kind.
