Creating massive slabs of wonderful instrumental Metal whilst culling influences from genres as different as Doom and Indie Rock and everything in between, PELICAN have been turning heads with their unique take on heavy music. After several years on the Hydra Head label, PELICAN have moved to Southern Lord to release their fourth full-length album, "What We All Come To Need" this October. Having toured North America with OPETH, THRICE, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, as well as a part of the 2006 Taste of Chaos tour, Pelican are currently headlining their own U.S. tour alongside label mates BLACK COBRA.

Let's talk a bit about the new album, "What We All Come To Need" - tell us about the song writing process.

"This one was a little bit different because we've all been separated as a band geographically for the past few years. Before we did 'City of Echoes' we all lived in the same city, Chicago, but now two of us live in L.A. and two of us live in Chicago, so most of the writing has been just us meeting with eachother occasionally throughout the year and us sending files back and forth, but mostly people refining their stuff on their own and then us making the most of the time we have together. But it's made us appreciate the time that we spend in the band when we're in eachother's company and so the writing process I guess in a way is even more organic now that we're separate just because we're making the time count. Brian wrote three songs on this record which is a lot more than he's done before and I wrote the others. Trevor just added his melodies here and there, but for the most part, it was a lot of Brian compositions for the first time and then some shorter songs and just trying different things; songs written around bass lines, something we haven't done before, just exploring new textures and obviously doing vocals this time, too. It's a lot of fun."

What would you say is the factor of live experimentation that goes into song writing with PELICAN?

"Somewhat. But really, whenever we play live, we stick to the formula pretty rigidly. I mean we occasionally stretch it out - one of us will throw in a riff here and there that wasn't on the record or try a peddle that wasn't used, but it's all just mostly for self aggrandizement, just please. Like, it's nothing that would really kinda be characterized as a significant stray from the formula of the song or something. It's not that different. So most of the experimentation is just at home and when we're writing in our respective abodes."

Tell us a bit about the new elements of the new material.

"The production this time is a little bit more… I don't know - everything's just a little more pronounced, everything's a little clearer, there's some separation here that wasn't there before. There's less of a wall of sound. I think we've harnessed all the individual elements of the music and we're able to present them through the filter of an engineer who actually knew what he was doing with us and was incredibly versatile with the studio environment and was able to bring out sounds in the individual instruments that we hadn't been able to really bring out to quite as clearly before. So I really feel like this one sonically sounds pretty confident and the separation's nice. It just has a lot of drive and power. This is my favorite recording so far for sure. It was actually a really fun record to make - we spent three weeks in Seattle at different studios and had more time with each song than we'd ever had before and just really afforded ourselves the chance for us to experiment and be creative without the pressure of the ticking clock, which before was always a problem."

You said a few minutes ago that you added vocals for this album. Why?

"It's something we wanted to try. We had a song that seemed ready for it; the melody was pretty linear and continuous and it was like, this would be the kind of instrumentation that we should really try to do and felt like a leap that we should make and just try to see what that instrument would sound like. We've always wanted to, just never really had the right song or the right moment or the right sort of moment of clarity where it seemed like, 'oh, this is it'. So we had it this time and I feel like it turned out really good."

You've left Hydra Head for Southern Lord - how is that going so far?

"It's great. We didn't leave for any controversial reasons or anything. We just wanted to try to see after being in a band for nine years what being on a different label and having a different means of dissemination would be like. It's just something that I think sometimes bands will experience and there was never anyway that Hydra Head was stunting our growth or anything like that, it was just something that we wanted to try and it seemed like the music we were writing and the direction we were headed would be a good fit. Greg was someone we were talking to and it seemed like there was willingness to have us on board and a year later everybody's okay with it, you know, there's no hard feelings or anything like that - we're just releasing music on a different label. It's really about as painless of a transition as we could have expected."

How are you satisfied with Southern Lord's distribution so far?

"Great. They're a very pro shop. We did a couple in-stores so far on this tour and our music's everywhere. The record's not out yet, but the in-stores that we've done, they've had the record. Posters, all the promo for the shows and stuff has been really strong, so everything's good."

Plus the stream of the album on MySpace has got to help a lot, too.

"Yeah, that helped too. They're very aware of spreading awareness of releases in viral ways, just ways that are different, so yeah a stream on MySpace is really helpful. We released a couple songs here and there and then we're going to do a video for this new one withy a new director and just try new things. They're open to our whims and interests as artists as Hydra Head was and that's really a comfortable thing."

Tell us a bit about the artwork for the album.

"The record, it's obviously not a lyrical record even though there's one song with lyrics, but all the song titles hover around a central theme and this one is about the… I guess it's in light of the downright scary plight that we've all sort of been in, both economically and just environmentally on a number of levels in the last few years. Or at least something that was there before it was maybe heightened and more sort of obvious because of the crash. I think it just reaffirms your strength in friends and family and your community and your art. I think I came to realize that I really had it pretty good, you know, and without these people and without the music that I'm making and the chances that I have to continue traveling and writing, that I wouldn't be nearly the person that I am, wouldn't be nearly as complete, so I just came to realize there were certain things in my life that I needed and I had them, so we wanted to title the record after it. The record really, I guess for the most part, shows a really bleak portrayal of what a beautiful scenery might look like if something kind of foreboding loomed over it. We've toured with that concept before but I think this one, we've really made it a lot more obvious than before. You know, the music on the inside's always supposed to stand in contrast to that. I think we operate always within shades of light and dark in our music. Sometimes we, as with older songs, we let the parts sort of build for a longer time. Now we're a little more quick with our transitions but we're generally sort of always painting with the same colors, so to speak."

You've released a lot of splits and a lot of EPs - is there a possibility of ever, down the road, putting them together for an anthology?

"Maybe. It's not something that we've thought about yet. But there might be some sort of box later down the line that might show the evolution of the EPs. It's the format that we always try new ideas with. Each EP is generally an indication of where we might be headed with the next full-length, so they're definitely unique records - they're not just throw-away records in any way, shape of form for us; we really like doing EPs."

Now as you've done mostly instrumental, have you ever thought of what would happen if someone just gave you a bunch of money to put together a touring festival of various instrumental bands? Who would you have play?

"All of us like really different music and we get lumped in with this instrumental thing. I guess it was kind of a unique thing when we started back in 2000 but now it's 2010 almost and there seems be like a dearth of bands exploring the sort of Post-Rock, distortion on and off sort of formula and we like some of them but I would hate to put together a package of all instrumental bands. (laughter) I would rather tour with bands that sound completely different than us and generally we always try to package with things that are not like us. We try to do things differently."

Recommend for our readers a book and then tell why.

"Oh, that's a really good question… (pauses) I'll try to think of something that I've read recently. (pause) Well, I finished 'The Jungle', which is a great book about the conditions in slaughter houses. So that was a good book. I'm partial to graphic novels right now and I haven't actually read it, but I'm curious about the Bible illustration that Crumb just finished. I don't know if you know who Crumb is, he's a graphic illustrator. He just completely illustrated the Bible and he's a '60s satirist, so it'll be interesting to see his sort of spin on things. He said he illustrated it in a way that was totally true to the words. So I'm anxious to read it - it might be the first time I'll read the Bible. (laughs)"

What would you consider to be the best or, failing that, most important show for PELICAN so far?

"Oh man, there's been so many. Hundreds of shows. If I had to think of one show that was pivotal… I don't know, man. I guess the first time we played San Francisco I'll always remember really fondly - just a really great show. Very memorable, good energy, good crowd. But there's so many like that, it's hard to just think of one, you know?"

My friend was telling me that the last time he came to see you guys, there were a TON of hipsters at the show. How often does this happen?

"I don't know, man - sometimes I think I look like one of them, too. I don't really pay too much attention to the way the crowd is composed because there's never anything, I think, in our music or in the way that we present ourselves that would have us draw one specific crowd over another. It's always really diverse. I'm always really surprised when I look out and see, like 'wow, people look really fucking different at our shows'. But I don't know what to attribute that factor to, I guess. No idea. It's always been pretty diverse." [FIN]