Pelican to Release Adrift/Tending the Embers This Friday; Listening Party Announced
If you think I’m about to start complaining about a new two-songer from Pelican, you’ve got the wrong place. The long-running Chicago (mostly-) instrumentalists helped pioneer a take on heavy informed by post-rock, post-punk, emo and shoegaze, and considering that kind of thing is everywhere now, I’d say history has proven them right, whereas one recalls in their earlier going the message-board kerfuffle the airier elements of their styles caused. Dudes were pissed. But in the parlance of that same internet, Pelican did nothing wrong. Wasn’t their fault, being skinny and playing heavy.
Yeah, there’s probably a bit of the power of suggestion with the first on-studio-recording appearance of guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec since he rejoined the band — you’ll recall Dallas Thomas (Asschapel, The Swan King, etc.) held the position for the intervening years — but I do hear some aspects of Pelican‘s earlier work in Adrift/Tending the Embers, which carries all the poise one might expect from Pelican as a veteran act but seems as well to be exploring and questioning what it is that makes Pelican who they are. Was it a willingness to be heavy without metal’s chestbeating toxicity? That bit of float amid all the surrounding crunch?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but as many have been following the band on the trail they’ve marched lo these last two-plus decades, as many have taken on their influence and as forward as the band has always looked, I’m sure glad there’s new music happening alongside the reissues and covers that came out last year. Whatever this leads to or doesn’t as regards a full-length, I’ll take what I can get. If you want to hear it before it’s out on Friday, there’s a listening party on Bandcamp tomorrow you can get on board for. Info follows as per the band’s email list:
Dear friends – we are thrilled to announce that we have launched pre-orders for our new ‘Adrift / Tending the Embers’ EP, which is out this Friday. These are our first new songs since 2019 and the first material written with founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec since 2012.
Laurent joined us on our 2022 Summer tour and the reunion proved so inspiring that we began writing a new album early last year. The ideas were flowing so quickly that it soon became clear that there was more than an album’s worth of material in the works. Late last year we booked studio time with our longtime collaborator Sanford Parker to document a pair of the earliest compositions in order to present them to our supporters sooner than later.
The result is ‘Adrift / Tending the Embers’ – digital preorders are up right now and a limited cassette version (first press is 200 copies) will be coming on Friday. We’ve also launched preorders for a limited long sleeve shirt based on Christian Degn’s hand illustrated EP artwork- we will only be accepting orders for this until March 6, so jump on it sooner than later if you’re interested.
If you’re interested in hearing the EP early we will be hosting a Bandcamp listening party tomorrow at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Please join us!
We can’t thank you enough for you support and your patience. We’re still writing the album, so it may be a little wait for that still, but we are so excited by the direction of the new material and are thrilled for you all to hear it when the time comes.
http://www.pelicansong.com
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http://www.instagram.com/pelicansong
https://pelican.bandcamp.com/
