Pelican is a dreamlike art-metal institution, a band whose kaleidoscopic melodies and ocean-dredging riffs have now hypnotized audiences for more than two decades. Emerging from the frozen tundras of Chicago, Pelican were early adopters in blending post-rock’s majestic repetition with sludge metal’s skull-vibrating bluster, adding their own singular sense of keening emo-psychedelia and heavy-metal motorik. Since then, their prismatic instrumental mesmerism has rippled across six critically acclaimed studio albums, soundtracked episodes of CSI: Miami and True Blood, and could even be spotted on MTV during the waning days of music video.
'Adrift / Tending the Embers' marks Pelican's first new music since 2019 and the first songs written with the band’s original lineup since 2012. The EP marks both a reunion and a departure, eschewing the caustic bombast of 2019’s Nighttime Stories for more delicate and nuanced territory that imbibes their pastoral Midwest post-rock tendencies with triumphant riffs that feel indebted to the classic Dischord pantheon.
Since reuniting with founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec in 2022, Pelican have been playing career-spanning live sets in support of Thrill Jockey’s expanded reissues of the group’s first three albums. Energized by the initial run of shows and the invite to record a pair of cover songs for Numero Group’s 25th anniversary, the band began writing again in early 2023. As the surplus of material began to amass and it became clear there was more than album’s worth of material taking shape, the band booked studio time with longtime collaborator Sanford Parker in order to share the burgeoning new direction with fans sooner than later.
