Pelican Releases First New Music With Original Guitarist Since 2012
Post-metal, post-doom, post-rock, or, as they call themselves, “Post-Emo Stoner Deathgaze,” whatever you call Pelican, it seems appropriate to throw “post-“ in front of it for some reason. Let’s just say that Pelican is post-music. Post-everything band Pelican is back with their first new material since 2019 (aside from a few covers released on Bandcamp last year) and returns to their original lineup with the first new music featuring the band’s founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec since their 2012 EP Ataraxia/Taraxis.
The new two-song release from the band, “Adrift” b/w “Tending the Embers,” is out digitally and being released on very limited-edition cassette on Bandcamp for anyone who still has their old Walkman for some reason and wants to rock out like it’s 1995. The new tracks show the band getting a little bit softer and more nuanced in their approach to their music, but still with some thunderingly heavy moments.
Pelican announced the departure of longtime guitarist Dallas Thomas in 2022 and announced Schroeder-Lebec’s return as the band’s touring guitarist at that time. Since then Schroeder-Lebec has rejoined as a full member of the band. The original statement from the band regarding the changeover, as reported on by Lambgoat, explains:
“The bittersweet aura hanging over these developments is that our longtime guitarist Dallas Thomas has parted ways with the band in favor of other pursuits. He’s been an intrinsic component of our live shows since 2011, joining in 2012 as a full fledged member in time for his integral and indispensable contributions to 2013’s ‘Forever Becoming’ and 2019’s ‘Nighttime Stories’. The band will not be the same without him and we can’t thank him enough for the years of incredible shows, recordings, riffs, and wild stories he shared with us.
“We do have a solution in place for our 2022 dates which will hopefully allay concerns and come as a welcome development to longtime fans of the band: joining us for the upcoming shows will be founding guitarist Laurent Schoeder-Lebec. We haven’t had the opportunity to share a stage with him since 2011 and we couldn’t be more thrilled that he’s agreed to get back into the thick of it with us. Seeing as the last two years of the band has been spent in a somewhat uncharacteristic mode of reflecting on our past, it feels like a synergistic development that we can now channel this same energy on stage, reflecting the past through the prism of the present.”
With Schroeder-Lebec back, the original lineup reunites, as all three of the other band members have remained consistent since the group’s formation in 2000.
