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Pelican Announce New Album Nighttime Stories out June 7; New Single Streaming

Pelican (photo by Marfa Capodanno)

I’m curious to know who did the cover art for Pelican‘s upcoming long-player, Nighttime Stories, as I’d like to put it in my notes for some of the best album artwork of 2019. I’m not big on posters from the merch table, because who the hell wants to carry a cardboard tube around for the rest of the show — or worse, not have the cardboard tube and just the naked poster dodging everyone’s beers — but I’d look long and hard at one with that cover on it. It’s gorgeous. It’s been a whopping six years since 2013’s Forever Becoming (review here), which was the last Pelican full-length, and the new streaming single “Midnight and Mescaline” only further piques interest at what these guys might have going nowadays. As the PR wire tells, they’ve been through some ups and downs in the last half-decade-plus, and they’ve always been able to portray an emotional presence in their work, despite the vast majority of it being instrumental.

This is a band people will like forever. Pelican were never going to capture the biggest fanbase in the world, but the enduring affection for their work runs deep among the converted. I’ve considered myself a fan for a long time, so take it with a grain of salt, but they have been and remain something special, and their influence is greater than they get credit for it being.

Nighttime Stories is out June 7 on Southern Lord.

[Update: the art is by Aaron Turner. Should’ve known.]

From the PR wire:

pelican nighttime stories

PELICAN Announces New LP, Nighttime Stories, Set For June 7th Release Via Southern Lord Recordings; “Midnight And Mescaline” Now Streaming

PELICAN, the instrumental quartet whose singular vision of heavy music eschews classification, has announced their first full-length in six years, Nighttime Stories, is due June 7th via Southern Lord Recordings. The album’s lead single, “Midnight And Mescaline,” is out now digitally and hitting stores as a 7″ with exclusive B-side track “Darkness On The Stairs” as a Record Store Day exclusive last weekend.

The eight-song set on Nighttime Stories marks PELICAN’s first release written front to back with guitarist Dallas Thomas, who took over guitar duties upon founding member Laurent Schroeder-Lebec’s departure in 2012. In the process of writing the album the quartet endured a slew of realizations, tragedies, and glimmers of optimism that guided the creative process to the most potent work of their nineteen-year career. Though the new material veers towards the darker tone characteristic of PELICAN’s early songwriting, it’s hard to imagine a previous incarnation of the band writing songs as meticulously crafted and detail-oriented as those within Nighttime Stories, where the compositions recall everything from the triumphant call-to-arms of classic Dischord, to the vicious troglodyte battery of the Melvins, to the dynamic interwoven melodies of bottom-heavy indie cult heroes Chavez. Nowhere is this evinced as clearly as on initial album single “Midnight And Mescaline,” the album’s lead single.

Nighttime Stories was an album title initially proposed for Tusk, the hallucinatory art-grind band that included PELICAN members Trevor Shelley de Brauw, Larry Herweg, and Schroeder-Lebec, in addition to vocalist Jody Minnoch. The writing of Nighttime Stories was instigated shortly after Minnoch’s unexpected death in 2014, and some of the dissonant viscera and dark psychedelic structures that were characteristic of Tusk’s sound began to unconsciously inform the album’s direction. In homage to their departed colleague, PELICAN applied the previously discarded title and pulled many of the song titles from notes Minnoch had sent to inspire the direction of the unrealized album. As the writing of Nighttime Stories progressed, Thomas also experienced a heavy loss with the passing of his father, to whom the album pays tribute on opening track “W.S.T.” (on which Dallas performed his guitar parts on his father’s Yamaha acoustic).

PELICAN has always excelled at vacillating between the savage sounds of various niches of metal underground and the more delicate and nuanced sounds of Midwest’s cerebral indie community, proving that they can make either end of the spectrum more vibrant and compelling through the art of contrast. With Nighttime Stories, the pendulum has swung back to the angst and ire of their younger years while delivering it with the nuance and wisdom that’s come with nearly two decades of writing and performing. PELICAN heads out on a ten-city US tour in June with more dates in the works for later in the year.

Nighttime Stories Track Listing:
1. WST
2. Midnight And Mescaline
3. Abyssal Plain
4. Cold Hope
5. It Stared At Me
6. Nighttime Stories
7. Arteries Of Blacktop
8. Full Moon, Black Water

PELICAN w/ Cloakroom:
6/20/2019 Loving Touch – Ferndale, MI w/ Greet Death
6/21/2019 Lee’s Palace – Toronto, ON
6/22/2019 Bar de Ritz – Montreal, QC
6/23/2019 Great Scott – Boston, MA
6/24/2019 Brooklyn Bazaar – Brooklyn, NY w/ Planning For Burial
6/25/2019 Boot & Saddle – Philadelphia, PA w/ Planning For Burial
6/26/2019 Ottobar – Baltimore, MD
6/27/2019 Club Café – Pittsburgh, PA
6/28/2019 Northside Yacht Club – Cincinnati, OH
6/29/2019 Metro – Chicago, IL w/ Young Widows

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Pelican, Nighttime Stories (2019)

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