Pelican pour l'album "The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw"

First, could you please introduce your band to our readers, your main influences and the style which could best define your music ?

I'm Larry and i play drums in Pelican. Pelican is basically the best band in the world right now. We play rock music that will crush your heart. Our main influences are Shotgun Messiah, Corrupted, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

What can we expect from your new album compared to "Australasia" ?

More diverse, more dynamics, more moody, more emo, less dense.

"The Fire in our Throats will beckon the Thaw"... what does it means?

Trevor came up with the title while he was waiting for the train in Chicago in the dead of winter. He saw his breath in front of him and wished he had enough steam in him to melt the snow and ice and end winter. Winter in Chicago is brutal and can take its toll on you mentally and physically. We do a lot of writing in the winter to pass the time and keep us motivated. We felt like the album was Triumphant in sound so we felt the title should have that sort of theme to it.

How do you find song names? Do you kind of imagine which words could express the images created by your music...

Song names can be tough as we are instrumental, but once we get all the songs written and decide theme of the record we ususally pick song titles that are appropriate. "Last Day of Winter" is the closest song title to the title of the record. "autumn into summer" is the idea of all together skipping the winter season. " red ran amber" also has to do with the change of season and the change of colors in the leaves in autumn. and so on...



How does you create a song? Do you work alltogether during rehearsals, or is there someone coming with almost a whole song already created?

It used to be Laurent came up with rough riffs for a song and put them together with me. We would lay out the song and then show the other guys. As of late the song writing has become entirely aucustic. Laurent, Bryan, and Trevor all sit around and write on aucustic guitars and then bring the song to me to add drums. Then they switch to electric guitars. We always like to keep one aucustic track for the lps to show people the songs in their raw form.

Where does the name of the band comes from?

We thought it sounded cool. We all were sitting around after practice and someone mentioned Pelican in a sentence and one of us were like " Pelican, that would be a cool band name". So we all agreed. Not much thought went into it really. Pelicans are pretty rad birds, and it fits the animal theme of our other band Tusk.

Do you feel that you belong to the metal scene? Your music is kind of very peaceful and quiet most of the time, and seems more rooted in the rock department than the metal one.

I think it is defienatly more rock than metal as of late, but still has pretty metal parts. "March to the sea" and "Autumn..." have probably our most metal moments, where "Red Ran..." is more of a rock song. We like that we don't fit into one particular scene, gives us more opportunity to grow and play with a variety of bands.

I guess you guys know quite well all this post-hardcore wave, with bands like Isis, Cult of Luna and Callisto (among others). Do you like that style, and which bands are your favorite?

ISIS has been one of our favorite bands since the band started. To say they didn't influence us would be a lie. We played our second show with them and that's what got us hooked up with Aaron Turner and HH records. Callisto, i'm not familar with and Cult of Luna is pretty good.



There are no vocals on any of your songs. Will it always be the same, or are you thinking sometimes of including vocals on some parts? And why did you decide at the beginning not to have a singer?

We just didn't look very hard for a singer in the beginning. We just keep writing songs and before we knew it a year had passed and we had like 6 songs finished. We never even tried a singer out. So we played our 1st show to see how we went over with a crowd and people dug it. So that was that. We were lucky enough to play our first show with High on Fire and had a descent crowd to watch.
As far as a singer in the future, i think it would be fun to try. maybe more of a studio thing though, to see how it sounds. maybe have a guest vocalest on a track. I was thinking PJ Harvey would be cool for the aucustic track on the new lp. Ha!

Will we have the chance to see you on stage in France one day?

Well we played a show or 2 in France last summer. We are trying to get back in November, possibly with MONO. Its in the works. I hope so, i loved Europe and can't wait to get back.

What do you do for a living apart from the band?

I work at Whole Foods Market doing back up accouting. Laurent works for the University of Chicago. Bryan does Carpentry. Trevor is a farmer.

What is the best (and the worst) memory you have from your musician's life?

We played our best show in LEEDs last summer and afterwards we went out to the van and saw it broken into. Stuff was stolen and it took a week to get a new window. So we drove half the tour with cardboard in the window and someone had to sleep in the van everynight to prevent further theft. It was also August so it was super hot at night. sucked.

If you could organise your own metal festival, whose bands would be invited?

Melvins, Jesu, Isis, Neurosis, Corrupted, Khanate, Enslaved, Leviathan, Mastodon, Slayer, etc.

What are you listening to these days? Any good metal / non metal albums to recommand?

New Obituary is pretty cool. New Leviathan "Tentecales of Whorror" is sweet. Darkthrone, Enslaved "isa". non metal records...Queens of the Stone Age, NIN, Autolux, Interpol.

If you could change something in this fucked up world, really anything you want, what would you choose?

Get George Bush out of office and end the war.

Last words are yours!

Thanks for the interest hope to see you soon.