3 out of 5

Label: Run for Cover Records

Produced by: Sanford Parker (recorded by)

Not everyone is a collector; it is a good thing for Pelican to put limited material out in a more accessible format. And not everyone has a hate-on for Thursday for no real reason, and so they might be more welcoming of Geoff Rickly singing over a Pelican track.

But I dunno. Pelican recently put out three of the four songs on Ascending as limited tracks – the B-side songs on a limited cassette, and the vocal version of Cascading Crescent on a bonus 7″ with limited editions of the full length (Flickering Resonance) that arrived shortly before this EP, so I feel a little bad-squishy about having ponied up for those. I mean, I’m helping out a band I like, and no one was forcing me to pick up those limited things, but would I have bought them had I know they weren’t going to be limited? Maybe I missed some marketing / small text that made mention of that, in which case: mea culpa. Regardless, I’m not really knocking this EP for it being mostly pre-existing material, but I am noting it as probably affecting my eagerness for it.

The Thursday bit… hm. The fact that the song appears in instrumental form on an album makes the addition of vocals feel superfluous. Fun as a bonus track, but as an A-side on an EP? I dunno, man. And I can respect Rickly’s control between hardcore howls, screamo yelps, and Maynard singing, however, that approach feels too flashy for the song, somewhat highlighting how it kinda functions like Pelican karaoke: just sing whatever you want to on top.

On a plus side, I think the originally-cassetted tracks on then B-side (Adrift / Tending the Embers) sound a lot better on wax than tape. What sounded like not landing the ending on Adrift really resonates better on vinyl. Back to being critical, though, the mix / master on the A-side – which differs from B, since these were separate sessions – do not serve the songs super well, kind of pulling back the chugga chugga elements that hit hard on the B-side in order (I assume) to make way for some of the guitar layering. The title track, our sole new one, is excellent otherwise, but my comment from the Adrift review of all of these sounding like the group playing it kinda safe apply. …However, just to keep flip-flopping, Cascading Crescent, in instrumental form, sounds awesome on CD / digitally, so I feel like we’re running into a mish-mash of masterings here: Adrift / Tending the Embers was dropped on cassette but sounds mastered for vinyl; while the songs from the Flickering sessions – though I admittedly don’t own that album on wax – sound great in digital formats, but are a little less impactful on this vinyl.

I… think that drops us in the middle. Three stars.