Pelican - City of Echoes (Hydrahead)
3/5
By: Charlie Potter
There have been a lot of bands of late who have garnered quite following by merely playing gigantic riffs. Reviewing these bands is an interesting task, because it's fairly obvious that the music isn't really made to stand up to particularly close scrutiny. Stuff like this has more of Brian Eno's ambient music ethic to it - it's made for a desired effect, firstly to make a riff so big that you can wallow and get lost in its sound, and secondly to make a nice, almost relaxing sort of vibe, similar to how people must feel when watching 'The O.C.'. It's comfortable.
As we mentioned, there are now tonnes of bands out there like Pelican, and it's difficult trying to determine a few things - firstly, whether they themselves are any better at it than other bands, secondly, how it is they do it differently, and thirdly, simply whether all that matters. Bands of this ilk generally do achieve the desired effect quite easily by following a simple formula. Repeating the riffs over and over means that people get to know the album quite quickly and feel comfortable with it within just a couple of listens, and that in itself isn't as dumb as it sounds.
I would say that yes, Pelican are indeed better at it than a lot of other bands and what makes the difference is the impressive strength of the vibe on 'City of Echoes'. What does bother me a bit however is that it still doesn't strike me that this album has been particularly difficult to birth. But should that matter, if they have achieved their aesthetic goal perfectly?
Well let's take into account Mogwai at this point. I think that Mogwai achieve something quite similar to Pelican, particularly on 'Happy Songs for Happy People'. Yet that's clearly an amazing (albeit underrated) album, one which took a lot more through and innovation to writer. The important thing is that there are a lot of really subtle and hard to explain nuances to LPs like that which hit you in the same place but go much deeper than 'City of Echoes' does, and I think that's basically the gist of my problem with it. It's just a bit too obvious what they're trying to do here, and how they've gone about it is a little too blatant. There's no mystery here. Pelican do what they do, they do it well, but they do nothing else.
But don't get me wrong - I think that this kind of music is serving its particular function well, and that's brilliant, but there's only so chilled out big heavy riffs can get you before you just stop listening altogether. Pelican would do well to put in more of the thickly layered acoustic bits they do really rather well as these are probably the more aesthetically powerful sections on the album, parts which shouldn't just be considered as a build up to something else. If anything, oddly, because of the nature of the production there's almost a dip in sound when the big rock riff comes in. It just seems that there may be more that they can do with the acoustics which would mean they wouldn't so often slip in to the ultra compressed monotone sound they seem to make with their grunty distortion.
That said, I'd still heartily recommend as the soundtrack to any chill out on the sofa with a cup of tea session you might currently be planning.
Stream the title track from 'City of Echoes' HERE.
Artists in this article: Pelican
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