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WATCH: Pelican's "Dead Between the Walls"
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WATCH: Pelican's "Dead Between the Walls" |
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[by Scott Thill] Chicago has a long and storied history when it comes to progressives and noise. Pelican is a bit of both. An instrumental rock behemoth loud enough to blow your eardrums, but smart enough to open your mind. Their latest effort City of Echoes is equal parts tour diary and anti-globalization rant. But rather than bore you with lyrical polemics, they let their music do the talking. And their music can talk, beautifully. Loudly. Don't sleep. Morphizm: Your music is fed through tech, yet it seems to speak to nature. Describe the relationship between the two as it relates to your songs and the band in general. Pelican: Pelican has always been interested in the conflict between loving our natural world and being in perpetual conflict with it by our existence as citizens of an industrialized society. Basically everything we do -- composing, practicing, touring, is made possible through these inventions that sap resources from nature. So we have always tried to pay tribute to nature and our love of it in our music. Nature is also a visual place for escape ... a place to let the mind wander to. Without lyrics, we just found that the connection made sense for what we provided aurally. Morphizm: Speaking of tech, I know you used a gang of pedals and instruments on this disc. Pelican: We certainly do love our effects. From reverb to delay, to moog, Hammond , bowed guitar, and zither. Tons of guitar pedals mostly. Morphizm: Talk about City of Echoes. I read somewhere that the title is a comment on globalization. Pelican: We titled it that for very specific reasons. City of Echoes stands for the feeling of sameness brought on by globalization. It's about visiting countries and seeing slight differences through the window, only to end up at the club and feel like you didn't see anything at all. The pace of the lifestyle is incredibly hurried and totally absurd actually. I mean, at our level, we still do a lot of our own driving, sell merchandise, set up gear, etc. The only luxury we can afford beyond mostly living off the band is to have our own sound guy, which has always been imperative to us. So we rarely get to see or experience much when we crisscross the country, but you do make efforts, and you do appreciate what you find. But it can also be a bleak way to see the world, just through a window. And you start to see the spread of the Western world, and you think of current events and raging wars for oil, and you start to get hit with how wrong it is to see the golden arches everywhere. But let me make this quite clear: The title also pays tribute to how amazing touring most often feels. It's also a tribute to the joy that burns inside when you reach a place and people who don't speak your language are rooting for your songs and welcoming you into their unique environment. Morphizm: Yet touring sounds like it's the wind beneath Pelican's wings. Pelican: We are driven to do this because there is nothing else that feels this true. And seeing a crowd so far away from your creative epicenter react so personally to your music is amazing for all musicians. It is to us, and so we titled a record for it. Pelican: We write in clusters. So when inspiration hits -- and it generally starts with a batch of Laurent riffs -- so it starts with me -- I write with whom is available to me, often Trevor, but on City of Echoes, more of Larry. Trevor had moved to North Carolina for a bit, so a few of the newer songs were completely orchestrated before Trevor came back into the fold to add second guitars. So yeah, back to clusters though: The cluster for the songs are generally brought on by a catalyst, be it a life event, something I heard, or even an idea. In this case, it's absolutely (and it actually hit all of us, not just me) the year and a half we spent touring Fire in our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. We became a full-time band and learned so fucking much about playing, running our band, maintaining a DIY ethic and trying out new ideas, making the most of each night, fighting exhaustion, traveling the world, etc. Of course there's a mountain of experiences and thoughts there, but the concentrated drive for City of Echoes was writing a record that would move us and provide material for a truly energetic performance. We didn't discuss it; it just happened, and I can tell you that 95 percent of the shows we've played since we finished the record have been some of our favorites ever. The new stuff is shorter, so we can fit more songs in the set; we also feel that the older material now has more of a chance to shine. The set is afforded the sort of dynamics that we've been striving for on record, too. This record is a bit stripped of fluff for me, but it accentuates and highlights parts that are denser and more interactive (for us anyway) that before. We really play together on this one. We always have, but older material embraced an ambient, wall-of-sound aesthetic which isn't on here as much. Morphizm: I'm seeing you called everything from post-metal to art-rock, which is interesting if not amusing. The Chicago scene has been trying to ditch that "post" as far back as Tortoise; what do you think it is about the lack of vocals that sends writers scrambling to create new genres? Isn't this all, including metal itself, just variations on the immense rock theme? Pelican: I guess in that sense we wrote something that used more traditional song structures, but it's just Pelican through and through. This record does show our cards, and it's one of the reasons I love it. For us, it absolutely shines a light on what I hope is unique about our band. And yeah, it's got metal, it's got standard rock and the rest. I think it's got a little bit of a lot of things, and so it can be hard to describe. Which is a good thing. Morphizm: Speaking of good things, who are some of the bands from Chicago you feel the most kinship with? Is it still an underrated scene, or has it finally gotten the respect it deserves for keeping American rock interesting? Morphizm: Your album was pushed back, and leaked to the internet as well. Do the two have anything to do with each other? Pelican: The album being pushed back had nothing with the leak. It was a matter of the label timing releases with more time in between. As for the leak, we had to send out early to the press, and then bam! It was everywhere. And it wasn't even the final master. It was just a bummer to see that everyone had it, with no cover art done, listening to an early version. It can really lessen the joy you feel knowing your music's making the rounds fast to thousands of people. Morphizm: So how do you feel the internet has changed the music game? Pelican: Well, as with a lot of things, the answer for me lies somewhere in the middle of the opinion spectrum. I believe that it's not super bothersome that music gets leaked, and for a lot of smaller indie artists, it can definitely spread your music to a lot of people who might otherwise not hear it, pay for it, whatever. But it can go too far. Most importantly, I also feel that the music package is still important, and music presented with art in a format that sounds great is still crucial. That being said, a lot of labels charge way too much for CDs. And we do make vinyl -- vinyl will never die. There'll always be a market for it. I can tell you that I've downloaded some records and been given burns of stuff, just like I used to make tapes for friends back in the day and trade with people. So I'm not opposed to sharing. I just think that artists should still get supported if a person likes them. And as with all things, sharing just seems like it's out of control right now. Morphizm: Are the majors dead? Pelican : I don't care what happens to the majors. Besides, a lot of indies behave like majors and have major label funding anyway. If people eventually want to stop buying CDs, then I am sure labels will adapt. June 11, 2007 |
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