Pelican rediscovers its joy

Prior to the pandemic, the members of Pelican had generally avoided looking backwards, preferring to seek out continuously shifting sonic terrain rather than dwelling on previously traversed ground. But the Covid slowdown and the subsequent dissolution of its longtime label, Hydra Head Records, forced the Chicago post-metal band’s hand.

“We had kind of hit a pause on writing, because we do our best writing when we’re together in a room. And at the same time, Hydra Head decided to close up shop, and Aaron [Turner] gave everybody their records back and told them to figure out what they wanted to do with them,” said guitarist Trevor de Brauw. “So, we opted to license the records to [the Chicago label] Thrill Jockey, which obviously meant reengaging with the earlier music.”

In the past, de Brauw said, the bandmate had cherry-picked the occasional song from their first three records to perform live, but the reissue campaign was the first time he had spent prolonged stretches listening to the trio of albums front-to-back, which also meant spending extended time with that younger, comparatively bullheaded version of himself. “I was a very acerbic and sarcastic punk who was into rabble rousing and being antagonistic,” de Brauw said, and laughed. “I like to think I’m a little bit more rounded now, but I value that I’ve come to my current perspective by having traveled that route.”

Listening back, de Brauw also uncovered a deeper appreciation for what Pelican accomplished musically on Australasia (2003), The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (2005), and City of Echoes (2007). Going into the reissue process, the guitarist held a belief that he had essentially stumbled his way through those earlier albums, and he walked away no longer believing that to be the case.

“I’ve always lived with the sense that I’ve been fumbling through my music career, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing,” he said. “And going back and listening to those records, it was like, oh, there really was something to all of this stuff, and maybe it was better than I thought at the time. So, yeah, the process was really gratifying.”

This dive into past records also led to the return of founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, who departed the fold in 2012 but returned in 2022 after guitarist Dallas Thomas left the band. Initially, Schroeder-Lebec only intended to play a handful of concerts that coincided with the reissue campaign and heavily featured the songs he had been instrumental in creating, but the connection was so strong and so immediate that the relationship continued, with the musicians quickly beginning work toward a new record.

Schroeder-Lebec and de Brauw, in particular, have a lengthy history, having made music together since they first met around 1996, collaborating in bands such as Yellow Road Priest and Tusk before helping to launch Pelican in 2001. 

“Laurent always had a distinct set of influences, and I was coming at it from a different direction, and I think finding that middle ground between our different playing styles and all of the places we could take it was really driving us,” said de Brauw, who will join Pelican bandmates Schroeder-Lebec, Bryan Herweg and Larry Herweg in concert at Ace of Cups on Thursday, Jan. 16. “I especially remember when … he started bringing in the songs for Australasia, and it was really along the lines of the stuff I was doing at home when I would just pick up the guitar and play, when I was really into the Red House Painters and more melodic stuff like that. And so, he started bringing in these melodic chord progressions, and I was like, ‘This is exactly the kind of wavelength I’m on.’ It was sort of like this meeting in the middle that happened, and everything moving forward from there felt like this whole new exploration.”

In the months prior to the pandemic and Schroeder-Lebec’s eventual return, the Pelican mates had started work on a couple of new songs, tabling them amid the arrival of lockdowns and social distancing – a stretch of time in which de Brauw considered that the band’s decades-long run might be over. “I didn’t know if things would ever stabilize to where we’d have live music again,” he said. 

It certainly didn’t help that the sessions for the band’s previous album, Nighttime Stories, from 2019, were labor intensive and drawn out, its themes shaped by grief and loss – a process the band members were understandably disinterested returning to at a time when everything around them sagged under a similar weight. As the pandemic cloud began to lift, however, and the band’s lineup galvanized around the return of Schroeder-Lebec, the songs began to take an unexpectedly hopeful turn, resulting in a single releasing next month and a new album to follow in the spring or summer.

“And what we ended up writing feels so much more ebullient that the last record,” said de Brauw, who joined his bandmates in playing the forthcoming album in its entirety at Gman Tavern – a 100-cap Chicago bar that rests just a stone’s throw from Wrigley Field – on the night before they entered the studio to begin recording sessions in July. “It feels really rooted in the joy of rediscovery and the joy of having this outlet. And I’m sure the joy we experienced onstage in those first few shows coming back from the pandemic was a huge influence on that direction. … That feeling of catharsis that can be achieved in a shared environment, whether it’s in a room with your bandmates who you’ve had 25 years of these experiences with, or even more so in a room of people who are experiencing all of that right there alongside you, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. For me, that’s the apex of my existence. And I’ll do anything and everything to keep chasing that feeling.”