Pelican have always been a steady presence within the rock scene despite taking a step back after the release of 2009s What We All Come to Need. It seems as though people never really forgot about the instrumental group despite them scaling back their efforts a tad after four full lengths and countless EPs. The band have been through some tough times and although last year’s Ataraxia/Taraxis EP was a welcome return for the quartet, there was something much more pressing at hand for the Chicago-based group and their, until then, solid line-up.
After forming in 2001 as a sort of side-project to most of the members other band, Tusk, Pelican have been a constant force. They’re adept at creating sweeping landscapes of sound and travelling through many an emotion without ever uttering a word, yet the excitement surround new material and touring plans had a darker side for the band as long-time guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec wasn’t feeling as into Pelican as he had done in the past. Luckily Pelican were able to still play live and drafted in Dallas Thomas of The Swan King and in the interview we have with Trevor de Brauw (guitar) below, you’ll learn about how this whole process and change was handled.
Forever Becoming then, holds a lot of Pelican within its walls of sound and evocative title and the band feel as new and as refreshing on this new record as they did way back in the beginning. It’s a joyful record, a sad record, and a record of forward motion. Forever Becoming is the sound of a band learning their place within their own lives, and within the post-rock/instrumental/wherever the heck you want to place them scene and it is wonderful.
Forever Becoming starts with the beautiful melancholy of “Terminal” and its precision movements of intent are a great starting point for a record that is full of clarity. The welling sadness that simmers at the surface of the track sets out the motive for Pelican quite succinctly and it’s with this initial sadness that Forever Becoming begins its journey to redemption and curves towards a narrative that speaks volumes of the bands mind-set and motives for this record.
“Deny the Absolute” is a forceful following track and there’s a noticeable crunch and passion behind its engaging lines of tight guitar. The music constantly shifts into new patterns and it’s clear that Pelican have taken some new approaches to writing this time around (more of which is talked about in the following interview) and it’s truly a joy to hear such reinvigorated soundscapes from them. “The Tundra” continues the themes of weight the bass lines (Bryan Herweg) that creep into the foreground are tangibly heavy and you feel as though you could reach out and touch them while the delicate, stripped-back moments in “Immutable Dusk” are light dancing sections of sweetness. Pelican have never sounded as alive as they do here and it’s evident that the band are treading new paths and they are doing so with a mature and graceful design.
Echoing sorrow pulses over the driving drum beats (Larry Herweg) of “Threnody” which ignite feelings of hope, yet this optimism is imbued with a little sadness as it seems Pelican are coming to terms with their past decisions and knowledge that everything they have worked for has at once ended, and begun. It’s quite the emotional journey and it’s testament to the band’s staying power and clear joy for their work that Forever Becoming bursts with warmth and gladness as well as an all too human truth.
The progression of the record is one that moves from those initial steps of moroseness to one that takes on new life and embraces the inevitability of the end, yet it doesn’t allow those feelings of finality to drag it down into a dark place. Pelican have taken their choices and pushed into new realms of acceptance and Forever Becoming instead turns into a reflective work that celebrates the past and looks to the future. “Perpetual Dawn” closes the album on waves of hopeful intent, its swelling curves of guitar beating with heart and promise. Pelican are renewed, and we are thankful.
Hi Trevor, thanks for taking the time to have a little chat with us!
Obviously the departure of Laurent (Schroeder-Lebec – guitar) was quite a shock for fans, and for yourselves that must have been a difficult situation to deal with – how did you move forward from that and find yourselves in a place to make the new album?
Trevor: The whole process was so gradual that it didn’t really register as a huge bump in the road per se. We decided to scale back touring at the end of 2009 and only did a few shows here and there in 2010. In 2011 the three of us felt ready to do some limited scale touring, but Laurent didn’t feel motivated to play shows. On his suggestion we started playing out with Dallas Thomas (The Swan King) in his place. At the end of that year we recorded the Ataraxia/Taraxis EP, which was comprised of two leftover songs from the last album and two new songs that Bryan (Herweg – bass) and I had sketched out as home recordings and the band fleshed out in the studio. The process of making the EP invigorated us creatively and put us in a place where the three of us wanted to start writing a new album, but Laurent admitted that he didn’t share in our inspiration. That was the point at which he decided to split – he told us he didn’t want to hold us back and that we should go for it. I think if we hadn’t already been doing stuff without him it would have given us pause to reconsider the band, but since we’d been playing shows and Bryan and I had been doing some writing without him it didn’t feel like as drastic as it might have. At that point it had already been a long time since we were actively writing and the EP had gotten the momentum going, so we chose to roll with it rather than lose any more time.
Forever Becoming is super great and it’s been a little while since your last full length – aside from the EP release and some recent touring, how have you guys been preparing for this new record?
Trevor: It’s more complicated than it once was when we all lived in the same place – Bryan, Dallas, and I live in Chicago and Larry (Herweg – drums) lives in LA. But with the last album, and even moreso with the last EP, we grew comfortable with composing via file sharing; doing recordings at home and then emailing them to one another. Larry came to Chicago three or four times during the writing process for marathon rehearsal and he’d already know the songs from the recordings we’d sent, so we could get right into tightening up the arrangements. After we got the structures nailed down as a unit he’d go home and record his drum parts, then Bryan and I would build fully realized demos on top of them. Taking the time and fleshing out the songs in the home recording environment gave us a lot of control and insight into the arrangements. When we were about three quarters through writing we set a recording date to give us a deadline, and shortly after that Dallas joined the band and helped us finish the last couple of songs and iron our some of the bumps.
There’s a definite progression on the record that can be heard in the development of the songs as separate entities but also in the work as a whole, did you go right back to the beginning in terms of song writing and structure? And how different was the process for writing and recording this album?
Trevor: Our process has always been to start songs working in small groups and take it to the full band to flesh out when the structure is mostly in place. What’s weird is that these writing duos had happened in every possible permutation over the years except Bryan and I working together directly as a duo. So, although we’ve played together for over ten years, this was the first time the two of us had collaborated as a songwriting team. Obviously we brought to bear a lot of the influences and sounds that people associate with Pelican, but there’s a new chemistry at work on the record too. In a way I think we captured a little bit of a “new band” energy despite having been at it for so long. Sequencing-wise there was a deliberate effort to try and suggest a narrative flow that carries from beginning to end. We actually had to cut one song from the album because it felt a little too jarring, which is the first time we’ve ever done that.
The album sounds exceptionally heavy and there’s a really nice crunch to it – it feels physical almost – what was your aim for tone and sound this time around?
Trevor: I feel like this has always been the aim, but in the past the material didn’t call for it as much, so we needed to scale it back. To be specific our older material is a little more detailed and note heavy – one thing we lost when Laurent left, for better or for worse, was his incredibly distinctive and detailed picking style which tended to fill every nook and cranny with notes. That playing style lends itself to more clarity, which implies dialing back the heaviness of the guitar tone a touch to make sure all the notes are cutting through. This album took a natural course toward being more spacious and open since that’s Bryan’s and my playing style. It lent some space to give the tones maximum density. I also credit Chris Common (producer, also of These Arms Are Snakes, who I know was keen on capturing the live vibe of the band, which has always tended toward physicality.
Can you tell us a little bit about the album artwork and how it ties in with the themes and narrative of the record…if at all?
Trevor: The album is called Forever Becoming and it is about learning to accept one’s mortality and recognize the beauty of death’s place in the cycle of life. The album artwork is by Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))), Æthenor, Ensemble Pearl plus countless others) based on a series of photographs by Andrew Weiss. The photos were interior shots of decrepit, decomposing houses, but photographed in a way that was visually quite arresting and beautiful. We told Stephen the theme of the album and he had artistic license to try and give those ideas a visual expression through manipulation of the photos. He far exceeded our expectations; it’s obviously quite abstract, but I think he really captured the sense of what we were going for.
You have Dallas Thomas joining you in a live capacity now, how did that relationship come about and was it a tough choice to make? Both in terms of “replacing” a lost member of the band as well as finding the right fit for Pelican?
Trevor: Dallas is a full fledged member of the band now, actually. We knew Dallas from his band The Swan King, whom we’d played with a couple of times. When Laurent suggested we go out with a substitute guitarist Dallas immediately came to mind – he’s an amazing musician and his style bridges the same chasms between punk, rock, and metal that Pelican does. From the very first couple of shows it became very apparent that there was a solid chemistry musically and personally. When Laurent backed away from the band entirely it was already obvious that Dallas was the right fit, but we postponed having him join fully until most of the record was mapped out. There was a sense that, from a writing perspective, the change from one record to the next might be jarring if we had someone join in Laurent’s place during the composition process. We got most of the way through writing the record before we knew that it was time to get some outside input and asked Dallas to formally join.
After Forever Becoming hits the public, what’s next for Pelican?
Trevor: We’re doing a few shows in the US culminating in an appearance at Fun Fun Fun Fest. Next year we’ll try to do a little more. We have jobs and families and the like, so we can’t really go back to the lifestyle of touring all the time. We’re just doing what we can and taking it as it comes. Hopefully we can get the gears turning on writing some new jams soon – it’ll be exciting to see where it goes next now that Dallas is a bit more integrated in the band.
Amazing, I reckon that’s all from me. Anything else you ‘d like to throw out there, go ahead!
Trevor: I guess I just want to add that all the support and excitement for the new material from the fans so far has been overwhelming and wonderful. We make this music in a vacuum, so to speak, and the creation of the music is its own reward. That there are people that support us and invest themselves in our work is a glorious and humbling bonus that we do not take for granted. Our gratitude knows no bounds.
Thank you Trevor!
Forever Becoming is available on October 15th from Southern Lord Records.
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