I'm Thankful for Instrumetal Part V: Todd's Long-Ass Reviews of Bands That Need No Introduction (Pelican and Russian Circles)

A lot of bands wind up with a mythology or narrative attached to the them. This can do a lot of different things. It can often generate interest ("Really? The singer is a REAL EGYPTOLOGIST? Sweet!"). More than that, though, it can be used to trash them.

Just look at Metallica. Metallica is a band that hasn't been able to get out from underneath the stories that wind up attached to them in decades. The fact that they consistently have put out shitty records ever since the 90s hasn't helped, but you know what I mean. For people my age, the Black Album is the album Metallica sold out on. I later found out that people older than me thought that they were never the same after Cliff died. Eventually I also figured out that people younger than me think the Black Album was great, and Load is where they dropped the ball (I started seeing fliers at music stores that said things like "Looking to form metal band that sounds like Metallica (PRE-LOAD!)" and my mind was blown). I'm sure there's some kid whose 15 years old right now who thinks that Load was brilliant and Metallica really lost it with STAnger. Either way, the stories which get attached to Metallica drive perceptions of them. They're fast and loud. They're hard working. They're thinking man's metal. Cliff is dead, and it's a tragedy. They're the world's biggest metal band. They're the world's biggest band. They cut their hair. They sold out. They're out of touch with their fans. They're suing their fans. They're a bunch of crybabies. STAnger is the worst record ever and sounds like shit. Death Magnetic is a return to form. Death Magnetic is too little, too late. Can anyone whose paid any attention to anything in the last 20 years listen to Metallica without some conglomeration of these narratives attached to it?

The same shit has happened to Pelican. Pelican became one of the biggest bands in metal off of what was, in effect, a demo. A real good demo that got re-released by Hydrahead, but a demo nonetheless. Ever since then, Pelican has been trying to dig their way out of the stories which have gotten attached to them. They're super heavy. They're Isis without vocals. They're the best metal band on the planet. The fact that they don't have vocals means that indie rock kids can like them. They're not heavy anymore. They used to be better. They're not really metal kids. They were only good on the EP. The new record is a return to form. No, the new record is them totally selling out and dropping all the heavy.

Pelican has inspired more stupid and over-wrought hand-wringing among kids on the internet than almost any band I can think of. With just about every record they've put out a huge line has formed on the left to praise it, and a huge line formed on the right to denounce it (and, usually, them along with their record). Then came City of Echoes. Even people who liked it liked it defensively. It just didn't hold up. A lot of people thought it wasn't heavy, or epic, or whatever, enough to work. I wasn't so much worried about that. I just didn't think it was a great record. It did almost nothing for me. It certainly wasn't as heavy, and it certainly wasn't as epic, but more than that they didn't do anything to replace the things that were missing.

On "What We've All Come To Need," Pelican find the balance. I would personally argue that this album is kind of a mulligan on "City of Echoes." It's the album that should have been. It's definitely not as epic or heavy as their first three releases, for better of worse, but the songwriting is significantly tighter, the songs feel much better constructed, and the record churns along with a laid-back confidence that "City of Echoes" lacked. There's something to be said for the idea that there's some intangible thing that makes song just work or not work, and these songs just work for me. The album kind of feels like "The Fire in Our Throats..." in miniature. They took the nice little smaller and more subtle parts of that, generally pretty bombastic, album and made a whole record out of them.

I, personally, am an "Austrailasia" partisan, although I'm also pretty partial to "The Fire in Our Throats..." This record doesn't top either of those by a long shot, for me. Having said that, I think this record represents a pretty good effort by Pelican to subvert the narrative that's gotten attached to them. By striking a balance between the more nuanced, but kind of boring, direction they went in on "Echoes" and the bombast they're traditionally associated with, they've kind of reversed the direction that people seemed to be assuming they were doomed to keep heading in. Hopefully people can actually listen to this record with the fresh ears it deserves, as opposed to going in with a preconceived notion about what Pelican is or is not.

Pelican on MySpace

--

Russian Cirlces has a similar trajectory for me. I think "Enter" is one of the most brilliant things that came out this past decade. "Station," however, left me a bit underwhelmed. It wasn't a bad record, but they did kind of the same thing Pelican did on "Echoes." They dropped some of the bombast that made their earlier work great, without replacing it with something equally interesting. I spent my whole first listen of "Station" waiting to be blown away, like I was by "Enter," only to realize about 2/3 through it that I just wasn't going to be.

"Geneva" is for Russian Circles what "Come to Need" is for Pelican- a record which strikes a balance. "Geneva" is significantly less over-the-top than "Enter," but has more peaks than "Station." Perhaps most importantly, it feels like it has a more varied sound than either of them for me, finding a happy medium between the anthemic "Enter" and the languid "Station," while simultaneously bringing some new sounds and textures into the mix. "Geneva" represents Russian Circles making full, successful use of their bag of tricks.

I'm not sure that this record tops "Enter" for me, but it certainly puts Russian Circles back on top of the heap as the mad-geniuses of techy-instrumetal that we all want them to be.

So, overall, it looks like a good year for Chicago-based instrumetal giants. Now maybe Unfortunaut can finally follow up on that awesome EP of theirs and I can be happy.

Russian Circles