Release Date: April 10th, 2012
When a band is able to hone in on emotion, expand upon it, and then provide catharsis, it is truly a beautiful thing. The skill of doing so often takes years and multiple compositional evolutions to get just right. After three years of silence, Chicago four-piece Pelican have once again proven their mastery of this with Ataraxia/Taraxia; 18 minutes of flowing bliss.
While a mere four songs, the new EP manages to lure in the listener, sonically captivating with a series of shortened, albeit complete compositions. Each of the 4 songs featured were recorded in different locations, a method that one would think could disrupt the syncopation of the work. Instead, the tracks complement each other in their brevity, and at no point does the music feel fractured.
Opening track “Ataraxia” (translation: “peace of mind”) intrigues in its unsettling, eerie use of pulsation and sparse acoustics. The jarring opening chords of “Lathe Biosas” heighten the alluring anxiety before throwing itself into a sweet reprieve of simplistic, guitar and drum driven calm. Monstrous riffs are interspersed throughout, a back and forth exercise.
Following is the crawling “Parasite Colony”, whose pacing is befitting of its namesake. It’s darker composition is heavy on the echo effect, but does not lose the guitars in the reverb. Rounding out the series is “Taraxis”, a sibling of “Ataraxia” in its leaning on acoustics. The use of bell-like tones provide a calming lull before the track explodes into a fuzzed distortion. The track ends bluntly, a nice change up from the usual drawn-out looping or reverberation. In like a demented lamb, out like a lion.
Pelican – Ataraxia/Taraxis tracklist:
- “Ataraxia”
- “Lathe Biosis”
- “Parasite Colony”
- “Taraxis”
