Pelican, City of Echoes

One of the best things about instrumental music, to me, is that it lets you visualize your own little picture of what it’s all about, without any of those pesky lyrics getting in the way. Sure, I love lyrical music, too, but there’s something inherently cinematic about stuff like Pelican’s City of Echoes. The band’s been pigeonholed as a “metal” band, but honestly, that’s about as accurate as calling Explosions in the Sky an alt-country band — on this album, at least, Pelican manage to deftly dodge any easy labels and instead stake themselves out in a realm of murky, fantasy-tinged instrumental rock that owes more to John Williams than it does Metallica. Labelmates/owners and fellow heavy-instrumental cohorts Isis fit the bill, yes, but here Pelican’s left the “metal band” tag behind.

The album’s title feels awfully appropriate, given the feel of the tracks; Pelican’s particular brand of heavy, metal-tinged instro-rock is majestic and threatening at the same time, like the soaring towers and brooding statues of some ancient, proud metropolis. “Bliss In Concrete” starts things off like the first glimpse of the city by some traveler coming across the plains, awe-inspiring and foreboding, while title track “City of Echoes” morphs into the hustle-and-bustle of a living city, grabbing pieces of prog-rock and vaguely British-sounding nu-New Wave as it needs ’em. The music’s pounding and thick-sounding throughout but still melodic and glorious (despite the weird bit in “Spaceship Broken–Parts Needed” that sounds a heck of a lot like “Dancing With Myself”; I’ll forgive the band that one).

A few tracks take a more delicate tack, like “Winds With Hands,” which marries cosmic, swirling feedback with gentle acoustic guitars for a Radiohead-ish feel, or album closer “A Delicate Sense of Balance,” with its wistful, yearning, Joel R. Phelps-esque feel (and yeah, as you can probably guess, “wistful” is fairly difficult to pull off when the music you’re making is generally crushing, pseudo-technical rock without words). Even when City of Echoes takes a breath and opens itself up slightly, though, there’s still an underlying sense of menace, of something dangerous lurking right around the corner. It’s borne out on the heavy tracks, which shift in and out nicely to create a soundtrack to the strangest city you’ve never seen.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to get my head around any particular track on here as a stand-alone “song” — the only way I can really view City is as one huge, 42-minute composition with eight different “movements.” Hell, even within a particular track, the band shifts from one motif to another at will but seemingly with a sense of purpose. This definitely sounds like a well-planned City, but like any real-world city, it takes a while to begin to make out the landmarks just yet. Probably my favorite of the “movements” on here is “Far From Fields,” an honest-to-God, meditative-yet-crunching, actual song, with recognizable start, finish, and all in-between. It’s like Chavez at their best, nice and weighty, with more aural substance than you get from your average metal band.

My one and only complaint, here — and it’s not a major one, all things considered — is that from time to time drummer Larry Herweg sounds like he’s rushing the beat of a track, throwing in an extra beat or two where there really shouldn’t be one. When it happens, it’s annoying, sure, like hearing a guitarist hit a blatantly off-key note, but what the hell; it never kills the song, or the overall mood of the album.

By the end, when all the instruments fade out into the distance but a confident, close-sounding acoustic guitar, the traveler’s making his way back home from the mystery city, a little bit wiser and probably poorer. He knows for certain that he’ll be back someday soon, mind you, ready to learn more about the sprawling byways and alleys. And for that, he’s smiling to himself.