"This sounds old," said my wife, referring to the fairly melodic sounding "heavy" band I was listening to.  She meant "old" like the music could be from the 90's grunge movement, like some lost, sludgy Sub Pop 7-inch out of the drizzly Pacific Northwest.  Turns out, she was on to something!  Chicago-based riffologists Pelican went out to Seattle to record their fourth full length album, and the results are lovely, thumping and, well, grungy.  

Pelican have run the critical gamut in the post-metal and instrumental circles.  Their first two records were head-crunching and cerebral, with The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw getting most of the attention for its interesting blend of metal riffs, melody, and creative moments.  It can be found at BestBuy for Christ's sake!  Then the wobegone City of Echoes was dropped on the hungry hordes, and a lot of people didn't like it.  Folks mostly blamed the drumming for being poor and directionless, but these lazy chops were a characteristic on the other records, as well.  Fans wondered if this drumming might ever tighten up and drop the hammer instead of clip-clopping incoherently underneath the rich guitar work.  The answer is finally here: Yes!  Resoundingly so!

For whatever reason, the drumming is great on What We All Come To Need.  Could it have been the presence of Dylan Carlson to help record an Earth cover?  Perhaps it was the contributions of Aaron Turner of Isis, Greg Anderson of Sunn O))), and a cast of other notable characters that gave this album a more mature focus.  Who cares?  What is certain is that Pelican have gone back to worshiping the RIFF as much as they ever have (maybe even more so) and at the same time have made catchier tunes.  

Setting the stage with some ambient whir and a singular, lower register guitar melody, "Glimmer" jumps out of the gates with a satisfying kick drum and sludgy deluge.  When they go heavy, the guitars still sound like giant marine beasts thrashing in the waves, as showcased in the jagged, punchy closure of "Ephemeral."  We even get some Black Sabbath-like grooves on "The Creeper," a song that lets us know the drumming is here to dominate.  Pelican still love to jam hordes of distorted notes into small windows, the amplifiers crumbling from within just trying to get the girth of the sound waves out.  When they don't pulverize with their molecular complexity or their titanically-slow jams, the band opens the space up quite a bit and weaves some very pretty landscapes.  Don't read that wrong; Pelican still inhabit a dark patch of the universe, so "pretty" is more like smelling the roses during a blustery thunderstorm rather than romping through a field of daisies on a bright summer day.   On the whole, this is a heavy album, but the band's interest in the melodic and dreamier compositions is featured throughout WWACTN, and where past releases sounded like tectonic or environmental explosions and collapses, this album sounds a lot more narrative in nature.  

There is even a surprise at the end of the album where I thought I was listening to a Thrice song.  Vocals!  Fear not, Pelican faithful.  They come from Allen Epley of the band Shiner, and his morose and charcoaled harmonies blend perfectly into the slow motion sludge and shimmer of "Final Breath."  Shiner don't sound too dissimilar to Pelican once the common vocal element is added, and they actually did release a 7-inch on Sub Pop back in 1997.  Was the grunge influence on WWACTN by design all along?  The production sound (reminding this reviewer of Tool's Undertow) suits their direction.  

Pelican have been using the heavy riff platform to capture a pop sensibility for years, and here on WWACTN we have catchy proto-metal storytelling along with the first taste of the band incorporating vocals.  Whether they continue doing this is another matter, but the band sounds more crisp with its song writing.  At times their riff-to-riff style can smell a bit like riff-by-number, arbitrarily piecing parts together, but Pelican get to the point more quickly here than on past albums, and it makes for a very satisfying listen -- Maybe as satisfying as the new Pelican Burger at Kuma's Corner in Chicago, who name all their burgers after famous metal bands.  A ten ounce beef patty with pan-seared scallops and lardons in a garlic white wine sauce on top of a parmesan crisp, served with white wine-garlic aioli sounds good.  If all this doesn't whet your appetite for a band that is doing metallic post-rock as good as anybody, then not much else will.

-Nayt Keane