From the Vault Exclusive: Pelican Details Each Track on Guest-Filled ‘What We All Come to Need’
[This article was originally published in 2009 on IndiePit.]
Pelican’s friends are cooler than yours.
The instru-metalists have been in good company throughout their career. Out of the gate, they signed to Aaron Turner‘s Hydra Head label, which the Chicagoans called home till they recently hopped over to Greg Anderson’s similar-minded doom factory, Southern Lord.
Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Godflesh) has remixed some of their slabs, and also mixed the sound for their live CD/DVD set, After the Ceiling Cracked, a few years back.
Pelican have also been remixed by Prefuse 73; collaborated with Earth’s Dylan Carlson on their Ephemeral EP, which dropped on Southern Lord in June; joined forces with Mono, Scissorfight, These Arms Are Snakes, Young Widows, Playing Enemy and the Austerity Program for split EPs; and toured with too many bands to count: High on Fire, Russian Circles, Torche and beyond.
In other words, they get lonely all by themselves. So would you, if you spent most of your time speechlessly venturing into the far-reaches of epic riffage.
Maybe taking a tip from their Windy City neighbor Kanye – or, more likely, from classic-rock bands of yore – Pelican are now ready to let some of their amigos (beyond Carlson) play along with them, featured-guest style.
“That’s something that we’ve aimed to do for a long time,” frontman Laurent Lebec told the IndiePit Blog this week. It was one of the band’s first interviews, if not the first, for What We All Come to Need, Pelican’s new full-length. The album is due this fall on Southern Lord.
“A lot of records from the ’60s and ’70s – because the artists were cultivated and had stronger relationships with each other back then, people used to guest on each other’s records. That was just a really common phenomenon.
“As much as you grow, there’s a lot of things you don’t do, and other people may bring a certain flair to each song that I’d never thought of. So I always wanted to do a record and have guests on it. That happened this time, and I’m really satisfied with what we got. Everybody was able to contribute something really unique.”
The chosen ones include Turner (Isis); Anderson [Sunn0)))]; Allen Epley (the Life and Times, Shiner); and Ben Verellen (Harkonen, Helms Alee). Just as fans will recognize those guests, one of the songs on the new album will also ring a bell.
“We revisit the track ‘Ephermeal’ from the EP we just did,” Lebec revealed. “We do it a little bit differently: It’s a little faster, a little heavier, and some of my favorite guitar work on that record is on that track.”
Speaking of “favorite,” Lebec told us that the album – which just finished being mixed and mastered – is indeed the consummate Pelican release.
“I really feel that way,” he said, crossing his heart (or so we assume; we were talking with him on the phone). “I think what really stands out to me about this album – as opposed to just being the typical cliché thing, like, ‘Oh, it’s our new record, it’s our best songs’ – is that because of the production and the way that we went about recording it, being able to take so much more time with each song than we had before, there was a lot more room for creativity. And [that] allowed certain parts to breathe a lot more. So things are just popping out in a way that haven’t before.
“With each record, we’ve had more time than the last one, and that’s due to a number of factors,” he continued. “Typically, we’ve had one more week every time that we go in. So this time we had three weeks – we got to spend a week on drums, and then we got to spend two weeks on bass and guitars, which was fantastic.”
Lebec was kind enough to give us a track-by-track distillation of the record:
“Glimmer”: “I feel [this] is one of our strongest [tracks],” he said. “It’s got a lot of movement. None of the songs are really long – they’re around the seven-to-nine-minute mark – but this one just has a lot of drive. There are almost cinematic passages in it, and Ben Verellen … does a pretty wicked bass contribution at the end that I’m really psyched on. … Pelican indulge their Hum and Sunny Day Real Estate mashup fantasies.”
“Creeper”: “The wolf is loose,” Lebec, calling to mind the 2006 Mastodon song of the same name. “Heavy and slow. that’s the one that Greg Anderson guests on … with a tree-trunk-size riff attack. … And that song is pretty heavy, pretty slow, and it hearkens back to some of our earlier influences. I’d almost say it’s our most Southern-rock track, there’s definitely that sort of element. A lot of the riffs are really bluesy in a way, but it’s pretty heavy and pretty slow.”
“Ephemeral”: “Considerably heavied-up version of the EP title track … check out those palm mutes. Always wanted to chug a bit, and we do it here.”
“Specks of Light”: “Trying for new territory … plenty of fast moments, lots of open space, too … this is us sharpening the delivery of riffs we discovered on City of Echoes … standout track for me.”
“Strung Up From the Sky”: “Bryan [Herweg, bassist] wrote this one … dirgey bass line dominates for an early Cure vibe mixed with lots of heavy ambience. Think this one will surprise some … Bryan taking the lead on songs on this new album has really invigorated us.”
“An Inch Above Sand”: “Another Bryan song … from the super-limited 7-inch split with Young Widows … this one has lots of grunge vibes, and just drives home the Midwest heavy-rock undertones that seem to be in the water we drink. Middle break makes me think of Liars and Nick Cave’s soundtrack work … wow, how full of myself am I?”
“What We All Come to Need”: “Title track. Expansive and melodic … really cool outro with Aaron Turner laying down mean overdubs.”
“Final Breath”: “Slow, plodding … my favorite track. Hear it. It speaks for itself.”
We’ll keep you posted on the release date and such as that news firms up.
The Bad Penny (beta) 
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