Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It no longer makes much sense to liken a Pelican concert to a high-decibel microtonal drone installation, because these days the band’s songs rely more on badass riffs than on skull-softening volume and brain-effacing repetition. They continue to use some of both, though, as Kevin Warwick points out in his preview of the band’s Wednesday show at Bottom Lounge: the new Forever Becoming, their first long-player in four years, “combines the drive and hooks of Pelican’s late career with the awesome hugeness of its earliest material.” But there’s still no singer, which means you’ll get pretty intimate with their guitar tones by the end of the record. It also means that the best one-liner in my old review still applies: “Criticizing this music for being monochromatic is a little like complaining that the ocean is all blue.”
De Brauw says the band chose the song “Immutable Dusk” because it’s “sort of the centerpiece of the album,” and that the title obviously called for a dark beer. “We were aiming for something slightly more sessionable than the doppelbock was and initially suggested a black lager,” he explains. “We settled on a black IPA since it’s more of a developing style and a bit more current.” The beer turned out to be a hair over 7 percent alcohol, noticeably less than the Creeper’s 9 percent.
Alas, this time I’ll have to wait till Wednesday night at Bottom Lounge, along with everybody else. Doors are at seven and music starts at eight. Bongripper and Enabler open the show; Pelican headline, of course, because it’s their party. Lately they’ve been playing in town maybe once or twice a year—this is their second and last Chicago date of 2013—so before you decide to wait for the next one, be advised it could be a while.
Philip Montoro writes about beer and metal, singly or in combination, every Monday.
