What We All Come To Need

With Pelican having recently jumped ship from Hydrahea Records to Southern Lord (the current spiritual home of all things slow and heavy), the question of whether they would return to their more sludge/doom-oriented roots, as opposed to the more classic rock-inspired sounds of City of Echoes, hangs heavy over the group's fourth album, What We All Come To Need.


This album though isn't a step backwards for Pelican. Nor it is really a step forwards. Besides the addition of vocals for the first time (which we'll get to in a minute), What We All Come To Need is pretty much business as usual for the Chicago four-piece. The songs here are a mixture of the shorter, more traditionally-structured pieces on City of Echoes and the more length explorations of 2005's The Fire In Our Throats. Guitarists Trevor de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec have by now perfected their intuitive interplay, balancing thick-skinned metallic riffs with glistening melodies, while the fraternal rhythm section of Bryan and Larryr Herweg provides a simple but effective framework within which they can move about. Familiar, then, but still highly enjoyable.


And then, on closer Final Breath, comes the album's one true surprise - an appearance by Shiner/The Life And Times vocalist Allen Epley. It's a risky move, as instrumental bands adding vocals to the mix have a tendency to go horribly wrong. But Epley somehow finds a sympathetic space within the song; his voice works more as another instrument than any kind of focal/vocal point, there by swiftly dodging potential disaster.


5/10