For all their predictability, there’s no denying that Pelican remain one of the best bands in the world at what they do. There are hundreds of instrumental post-rock/metal bands around nowadays, but few have the assuredness of touch and quality control that the Chicagoans have demonstrated over the last decade and more.
‘Forever Becoming’, their fifth studio full-length and first without Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, is a convincing exercise in maintaining the group’s high standards. Whether it achieves anything else is a more troublesome question. There’s a lot to be said for playing to your strengths, and there’s no denying that this record is all about Pelican playing to their strengths.
The likes of Deny The Absolute and Immutable Dusk are straight-ahead riff excursions in which the band balance out the mammoth power of their guitars with gentle melodic refrains and textural nous. It’s pleasant enough stuff, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone new to Pelican is going to find that anything remarkably inspiring is on hand.
Unlike some of their contemporaries, and Russian Circles in particular come to mind here, Pelican do occasionally come across like they are a bit too wary of experimenting with their sound.
In hindsight, part of what was so pleasing about the less metallic ‘Ataraxia/Taraxis’ EP when it arrived last year was that it suggested Pelican wanted to progress down a road of sustained textural diversification while simultaneously continuing to pump out instrumental anthems.
There’s little follow-up to this vibe on ‘Forever Becoming’. It’s hard not to think that a track like Vestiges, for example, would be more interesting with some subtle keyboard work, or perhaps a mid-song acoustic breakdown.
In the last 18 months or so Pelican shows have become ever more focused on the energy rather than the dynamics, so perhaps it’s not exactly surprising that they’ve produced an album that sounds like this. Occasionally it feels like ‘Forever Becoming’ places too much emphasis on the former, forgetting the potential brilliance that could arise with more deliberation on the latter.
Ultimately, this is a record that will please any fans of this kind of music, especially those who like their riffs beefed up to the max, but it’s a tiny bit frustrating to think of what Pelican could achieve if they just showed a bit more willingness to mix up their sound.
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