2 out of 5

Label: Southern Lord

Produced by: Chris Common

There are probably few long-running bands I can say I was following from the start (at least for any official releases), but Pelican is one of those, and they are near and dear to my heart. They satisfied an exact itch with their first EP, and while I don’t know if albums that followed were exactly that satisfying, they still produced a breed of heavy instrumental metal that was very appealing. They’re one of the fewer bands I would go see live, and fewer than that when it comes to those I wanted to see more than once.

I’m not especially subject to rejecting groups based on perceived popularity, but I know I had some of that happening when Pelican started to take off on a larger scale. Though it wasn’t exactly them as it was groups like Red Sparowes coming into the mix and getting a lot of press; in my holy judgments, these groups weren’t as good as Pelican, and it started to create a weird bit of feedback where their influence was coming back to “my” group. And then they split with my hardcore label of favour – Hydra Head – for Southern Lord, which I pissingly judged even further, and What We All Come To Need arrived with some really bland looking artwork, and… well, I mean, I listened to the album, of course I did, but it’s become the Pelican disc I always kind of forget about. It’s never in my playlist.

Returning to it with the purpose of reviewing, I was curious if that was all bias, or if there was actually something going on. The album has more heft than I recalled, kicking off with some tried and true riffage, and executes a couple stunning moments where it feels like the group – working with new producer Chris Common – had found a way to merge the more accessible aspects of their then-peers with their own sound. I’d think this, and then completely forget about it a moment later when my thoughts wandered.

What We All Come To Need is an album without an identity. It mimics Pelican-isms, just as it cops from the instrumental scene at the time with some shoegaze noise and glittery (as opposed to chugga-chugga) guitar bits, but it doesn’t exactly commit to any one of these. It is performed well; there are “good” songs. Except it sits so uncertainly between styles as to become a wash. This is what drops it into a more negative rating: the flashes of something special, set against the relative blandness, make for a worse listening experience, drawing more attention to how it’s not working.

Common’s production highlights the percussion in a way that I prefer, giving the music a nice low-end kick their previously somewhat sludgey production could lack, but Chris (and the group) don’t seem to know how to mix in some of the sonic extras, or to balance out the pretty parts; Pelican just isn’t really dynamic enough in their playing style to support this stuff. A track like An Inch Above The Sand, for example, has some really cool interplay that you could trace back to something like American Don, but here it lacks punch. And though there was some to-do about bringing in vocals on the concluding song, Final Breath, it essentially sounds like a whole different band – it’s Allen Epley singing over what could very well be a Shiner track.

Behind the scenes there were tensions and exhaustion. The group pushed through to deliver an album, but I think this influence shows – What We All Come To Need is not rocking or emotional enough, and it fakes the smiles it offers. I can listen to this and appreciate some moments from afar, but even standout tracks like An Inch Above The Sand or Ephemeral have their moments of wandering, of the group not knowing exactly what kind of feel they want the track – much less the album – to have.