More often than not, instrumental music like Pelican’s is an exercise in patience. Stringing together one riff after another, repeating 15 more measures and moving on to the next has a pretty narrow window of success. You have to either have a really powerful, emotional, interesting riff or something that – adding up to the rest – makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. What We All Come To Need is a solid but confusing effort from the Chicago quartet. Honestly I’ve never been a fan of doom/sludge metal, stoner or even post-rock. But Pelican has elements of all four without fitting properly so I didn’t know how to approach the album. With the exception of a few moments, its message is kind of underwhelming.
The first track, ‘Glimmer’ offers a perfect example of what can go right when Pelican fires on all cylinders. It begins with the standard short buildup and jumps to just bludgeon you with probably the most beautiful and powerful melody on the album, keeping up the pace for the 7+ minutes. ‘The Creeper’ plods along at the start though, which can be forgiven as Larry Herweg’s drumming stands out and really projects itself as the best part of the album. It’s extremely solid and perfectly mixed. The man hits hard and it works by ratcheting up the overall energy of the band.
There are a few disappointing moments though, as the riff that anchors ‘Ephemeral’ feels out of place in its position in the song and doesn’t really have a preface or any sense of resolve. There’s this little heavy breakdown that shows up in the middle that is just too short and I would have liked more energy out of them. There’s a nice uplifting break with “Strung Up From The Sky” but it was around this point that I realized that–much like my neighbors that share a common wall with my bedroom– there isn’t much relativity with their laborious pounding. You need the light to give the heavy its meaning.
Without the extra layer of lyrical melodies to rely on, it feels like something is missing, but you have to have respect for them to not use that as a crutch. “Final Breath” bucks the trend with some sparse vocals from Shiner and The Life and Times’ Allen Epley. Similar to The Fucking Champs drummer Tim Soete on IV’s Extra Man it seems like a limp response to the critics of instrumental riff-oriented rock. While they can write a song with vocals, in both examples it’s really only an exercise in melody rather than “completeness”.
I’m not going to use any abstract words like ’sublime’ or ‘incendiary’ to describe What We All Come To Need because I feel like I should give the same perspective to this review as they did to the album. It’s pretty unremarkable with some great moments mixed in. There are elements of intertwining texture and melody which are pushed back in some of the double tracking, rewarding the listener to approach from a different angle on subsequent listens, but it feels like a vanity license plate. It is a challenge to figure out at first and hardly ever clever. It’s tough to review an album that isn’t really for you. Any piece of art for that matter. What We All Come To Need feels very bland and inoffensive. It’s good mindless background driving noise, but not much else.