PELICAN
*Nighttime Stories*
(Southern Lord)
There might not be a more thrilling trio of instrumental hard rock songs than three found on Pelican's new full-length album, the first since 2013. About three minutes into "Midnight and Mescaline" through the end of the song, the post-metal pace slackens and allows the band to explore stunted power-chord riffing amid a groovy, repetitious beat. It's that rough, groovy texture that Pelican has honed like no other band over a near two-decade career. The mesmerizing end to that track quickly transitions into the bouncy pop rhythm of "Abyssal Plain," which soon transitions into grindcore and then to wide-open mid-tempo jamming of layered guitars and headbanging time changes--and back to grindcore again. "Cold Hope" finishes the trifecta--a bottom-heavy and relentless burner with even bigger grooves and riffage than the previous two. It closes out the trio with air-raid siren guitar solos. The six other tracks help cement this offering as the band's best, most complete album: the title track ups the ante on the dirty-sounding, distorted riffage, and "Full Moon, Black Water" shows the band's widest range of hard rock styles over its eight minutes in length. At the four-minute mark of this track the band once again breaks it down into the muted and frantic riffing for which it is best known, only to end with a shoe-gazing passage that evokes the pleasurable feeling of awakening after a long night of dreaming.
9/10
Link to the print version of this review in the July 2019 issue of Illinois Entertainer. Navigate PDF file to page 28.
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