Review Summary: Dudes rock
The biggest feather in Pelican’s cap is just how earnest and overjoyed their music sounds to simply exist. The ocean of ink that had been spilled about the death of post-rock and post-metal has long since dried and faded to the point of being near-imperceptible, but Pelican continue to (quite literally) chug along with grace and dignity as they approach a quarter-century of age and the twentieth anniversary of their opus
The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw. While that album was as towering and gargantuan as the band would ever be as far as atmospherics and contorting themselves into a traditional post-rock shape, their output since has had far different aims. Rather than succumb to the same pitfall as many of their peers did with having to constantly one-up increasingly lofty builds and climaxes, the band settled on sounding more and more like a group of dudes who just want to play something loud and heavy: mission accomplished.
To lay my cards on the table, this has somewhat made the group a difficult one to talk about simply because they are such a straightforward act. They make loud and heavy music that sometimes aims to turn repetition into mantra and sometimes wants to dish out beefy riff salads. These distinctions, while no doubt important to the precious little granular discussion to be had of their work, aren’t really going to be the difference maker for someone enjoying the group or not. Likewise, individual songs tend to get lost in the shuffle of whatever overall vibe a given Pelican album is. Again, you either probably dig everything or not at all.*
*
The three of you reading this who want to have a What We All Come To Need discussion can form an orderly queue
Flickering Resonance, Pelican’s latest, provides more to dig. The group sounds as jubilant as ever, welcoming founder Laurent Schroeder-Lebec back into the fold to produce all the tectonic riffage and meditative headbanging one could hope for. There’s a little something for anyone who has ever had even a passing interest in the group, from the
City of Echoes homage “Evergreen”, or the twinkly opener “Gulch” sounding almost like a sped-up version of
Untitled EP’s “Mammoth”. Plenty of comparisons can be made, but the greater point is: if you liked the other stuff, you’ll like this too.
What keeps
Flickering Resonance from sounding like a glorified retread is its even keel. These songs are long and sprawling, unafraid to luxuriate on grooves that expand and contract, yet rarely explode with the requisite pyrotechnics the genre would have you come to expect. This isn’t a bad thing, however, as it’s somewhat refreshing that epic tracks like “Indelible” and “Flickering Stillness” navigate their climaxes with a familiar ease, gently rising and falling like sitting on a surfboard through a wave. Nowhere is this illustrated better than the meditatively bass-heavy “Wandering Mind”, which stands as one of the most unique tracks in the band’s entire catalog as it cascades its hypnotic groove into a triumphant daydream.
While
Flickering Resonance isn’t going to edge out the band’s strongest work (“Cascading Crescent” asks a bit too much of the listener while offering little; a few minutes could have likely been shaved from the total runtime), it is another strong entry in their catalog that provides plenty of reasons for the band to sound as celebratory and victorious as they do.
May they chug on for another twenty-five years.
