Pelican @ Emo's, Austin (08.04.2007)

After a longer concert dry spell than normal (my last show was Tool in May), I was jazzed to find out last week that Pelican would be hitting my favorite small venue in Austin on Saturday. How I had not heard about the show until 4 days before, I have no idea. But judging by the fact that the show was inside (much smaller than the outside area) and by the fact that the show was still not completely packed, even given the smaller area, my guess is that it may have been a somewhat last-minute scheduled show. I'm just glad I happened to check the schedule in time, I was definitely in need of some good live riffage.

First, there were two opening bands. The first one, Fatal Flying Guillotines, was awful, mainly due to the retardedly spastic singer. I suppose I would classify their style as a punk-metal kind of thing, and as far as musicianship goes, they weren't too bad. The drummer seemed fairly competent, the guitarists were fine, and the bassist was actually pretty damn good. The songs were just so-so though, and any last hope of finding them remotely interesting was destroyed by the singer's antics. His vocals were a whiney type of shouting, and he stomped around the stage like a cross between Mick Jagger and a gimpy peacock. He kept lifting up the mic stand and swinging it around, more than once hitting the two guitarists on either side of him. And once he threw it lamely into the small crowd of people at the edge of the stage, and they kind of looked at it, picked it up off the ground and handed it back to him. It appeared that one of the guitarists had a major beef with him too, as the guitarist kept shoving the singer away from him, and once he slung beer into the singer's face when he was getting all up in his business. It would have all been pretty comical, if it hadn't been so damn annoying. I've already wasted way more words here on them than they really deserve.

The second opening band was called Clouds, and they weren't half bad. They were kind of all over the place style wise. They primarily had a sludgy Black Sabbath type sound, but would then go off into more jazzy, progressive parts, kind of reminiscent of Mastodon. I didn't think any of it was good enough to buy and check out further, but as opening bands go, they weren't bad.

So, then came Pelican. Here is the setlist:

01. Concrete In Bliss
02. City Of Echoes
03. Drought
04. Lost In The Headlights
05. Dead Between The Walls
06. Far From Fields
07. Aurora Borealis
08. Sirius
09. Red Ran Amber
(Break)
10. Mammoth

Its was definitely an interesting setlist, and longer than any set I've seen Pelican play (total time was about an hour and 25 minutes). I had expected a full dose of songs from the new album City Of Echoes, which lent 5 of its 8 tracks to the set. What I was not expecting, though, was to hear anything from Australasia or the self-titled EP, or see such a focus on the latter half of The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw. Not to say that it was bad, on the contrary it was an incredibly refreshing set, executed flawlessly. I was just surprised because a) I had not heard them play anything from Australasia in a couple years, b) I don't think I had EVER heard them play anything from the EP, and c) I had never seen them NOT play "March To The Sea" since the song was recorded. Roll all those into one show, and you've got one very suprised yet ecstatic tedo!

Just as a note, though, I will say that I do think it was a mistake to not play "March To The Sea". That song should always be played, I don't care how tired of it they may get. That song is so great, it transcends their ownership of it. Every Pelican fan should have the chance to see how thunderously that song brings the house down! But, that's the only slight negative I will mark up for this show.

Everything else about the show was perfect. The sound was excellent. The last couple Pelican shows I had seen had the guitars cranked a bit too high, so that a lot of Trevor de Brauw's higher stuff got lost. I'm glad to say that this was not the case Saturday at all, everything came through very clean and crisp, with maybe just a little bit of tinkering with the sound during the first song. Schroeder-Lebec's guitar was as crunchy and massive as I've ever heard it. The bass and drums were solid as always, which is particularly important seeing as Pelican's songwriting has continued to feature more standout bass parts and active drum elements. Maybe playing the inside venue helped accoustically, but whatever it was, it was nice to see the sound setup return to form.

Performance wise, this was definitely the tightest I've seen them play, and they seemed to be having an absolute blast. Having the new material from City Of Echoes has added some much-needed depth to their repertoire, and the style changes throughout the show seem to have added another level of energy to the guys in the band. By their standards, they were extremely interactive with the crowd, and seemed to really feed off the excitement of the crowd. I may be completely wrong about this, but it seemed to me that adding the encore at the end was a spur-of-the-moment decision. They had all gotten about half-way off the stage, and were just staring almost in shock at how insanely wild the crowd was cheering. Larry Herweg looked as if he didn't want to leave the stage, and he called something out to the other guys. After about 20 seconds of quick conversation, they strapped back up, plugged back in, and launched into "Mammoth", a sludgy monolithic cruncher from their self-titled debut EP of all things. Was it the best song for an encore? No. And honestly, its a track that I typically skip over if I happen to listen to the album. But with the circumstances surrounding how it was played and the energy and vibe running through the place, it could not have been a sweeter treat. Digging deep into their back pocket and pulling out something probably never heard by any fan there just summed up the whole evening. The guys in Pelican were giving their all, and it resulted in what might very well be the best show I've seen them put on yet.

Support these guys. If they are in your town, go check them out, talk to them before or after the show. They are nice, hard-working guys who love doing this. You'll have a blast, I guarantee.

(And here is a link to a recent article about the band. Its a good read:
http://www.decibelmagazine.com/features/jul2007/pelican.aspx).