DOWNLOAD THEN SEE: Pelican

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 11, 2009 10:20PM

Pelican's latest album What We All Come To Need further refines the band's approach to sculpting mighty slabs of atmospheric metal. The band started out playing dive-y clubs in Wicker park and Ukranian Village years ago and gained a decent following pretty quickly by being scrawny indie boys playing instrumental metal. It was kind of interesting in a landscape of post-rocker and proto-hipsters. But what seemed slightly gimmicky at first turned out to be based in a real passion for taking sound and making it into monoliths eclipsing their audience. While their music has grown ever more precise through the years, it's never lost the passionate base that makes it something more than simply stoner math rock.

We offer proof of this point in the form of "Strung Up From The Sky," a slow thunderstorm of a song that eventually breaks out the sonic equivalent of foghorns leading wayward ships in from a turbulent sea. What is it that sets Pelican apart from the crop of bands that their early appearance on the scene inevitably spawned? Every song they write reaches for epic status, and more often than not they attain that goal.

MP3: Pelican "Strung Up From The Sky"

Pelican plays tonight, December 11, at The Empty Bottle, 1035 N Western, 10 p.m., $12 advance / $14at the door, 21+