Michael Patrick Brady

ALARM Magazine | Issue #27
ALARM Magazine #27 is out now, meaning it should be on your local newsstand sometime in the next month or so. In it, you’ll find my review of Through the Sparks Lazarus Beach and Up the Empire’s Light Rides the Super Major, both of which also happen to be available on the web.

(Hey, my review of the new Robert Pollard/Circus Devils disc is also online, though it won’t appear in print till September…)

It seems, however, that you won’t be seeing my review of Pelican’s City of Echoes, which has been instead covered by a writer who was far more generous than I was. For the record, I will print my original submission inside:

Pelican: City of Echoes
With their third full length album, Chicago’s Pelican seems to be aiming at an audience that loved the grungy songs of early 90s alternative rock acts like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, but wished all those lyrics weren’t getting in the way of the heavy riffage. City of Echoes is nonstop sludge, and leaves the listener waiting for angsty, abysmal lyrics to come in and spice things up a bit. Yes, that’s how dire the music is; you want there to be angsty lyrics. From opener “Bliss in Concrete” to closer “A Delicate Sense of Balance” (both woefully mistitled), Pelican shambles along a thick, turgid bass-line that swings slowly and awkwardly like an elephant’s trunk, and sounds half as musical. The band seems stuck, unable to embrace the hypnotic grind of the more effective Noxagt or cut loose in a bone-rattling low-end frenzy like noisemakers Lightning Bolt. Instead, they sit on the fence, throwing in the occasional squalling solo that only chases its own tail, leading nowhere. Instrumental music lives and dies in the details, the tiny, minute elements that give it texture and free it from being merely a foundation for traditional chord progressions and words. It requires leadership. Pelican seems content to splash around in the shallow end and sound like a band waiting for their frontman to come back from the bathroom.

What can I say?
[tags]Pelican, City of Echoes, Alarm Magazine, Hydra Head, Robert Pollard, Circus Disco, Sgt. Disco, Ipecac[/tags]