February 28, 2010

Reviewer: Dinah

When I first popped What We All Come to Need into my CD player, I was driving. It happened to be that, on that day, at that time, the weather was such that the world had an incredibly surreal golden tint to it, making the fields, forests, roads and skies around me look more like an avant-garde movie than New Jersey can ever normally hope to be. With Pelican’s latest album playing, I literally felt like someone had trapped me inside a music video. The landscape fit the music far, far too well.

The album is highly atmospheric, with longer songs that blend easily into each other. It’s almost entirely instrumental. It seems very artsy, if you like that sort of thing. I imagine it is, or will be, a very hip album. It seems hip. I’m not sure what ‘hip’ indicates, but generally I think it would indicate this.

I should probably add that anything titled progressive or post metal to me is immediately a giant, flashing ‘danger!!’ sign. Perhaps this is just my taste in music, but having found so many of such labeled bands that seem so distinctly not-metal in any way, shape, or form, I tend to stay away from them. Pelican, of course, is one of these bands; What We All Come to Need isn’t very metallic. That’s not to say that it isn’t a good album, just that it is not necessarily... metal. Having read quotes from them on the subject, I imagine they’d agree.

What is metal about the album is the deep, grungy tones of the guitar which lend to its surreal scenery. The musical composition is fantastic; it really does create some very vivid imagery, just like the world outside of my Honda that day. I’m completely willing to admit to being impressed by an album that so easily described and documented the feeling of out-of-body unrealness created by being in a place that looks familiar but isn’t.

Still, while I can admit to being impressed, and while I honestly think that the album has a lot of thought, effort, and work inside of it, I definitely can’t admit to enjoying it. The album felt like one fifty minute long song, and it took enormous amounts of effort on my part to not zone out, forget I was listening to it, or walk away out of boredom. It’s pretty, but it’s also pretty boring. It’s not an album to which you can just sit and listen; maybe it’d be a great background for reading a book, or playing frisbee with your bros, or chess, or getting stoned off your ass and devouring oreos like the cookie monster. A very nice background, but a background nonetheless.

Release Date: October 27th, 2009
Label: Southern Lord Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Glimmer
2.  The Creeper
3.  Ephemeral
4.  Specks of Light
5.  Strung Up From the Sky
6.  An Inch Above Sand
7.  What We All Come to Need
8.  Final Breath

Total playing time:  51:28

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Pelican - What We All Come to Need