New Video: Pelican Shares Swaggering and Expansive “Indelible”

Flickering Resonance is the Chicago-based outfit Pelican‘s first full-length album in six years. Slated for a May 16, 2025 release through Run for Cover, the album sees the return of founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, who makes his first appearance on a Pelican album since 2009’s What We All Come To Need.

The forthcoming eight-song album also reportedly taps into the spirit of the band’s formative era when Schroder-Lebec along with Trevor Shelley de Brauw (guitar) and siblings Bryan (bass) and Larry Herweg (drums) played shows during the heyday of Chicago’s all-ages club Fireside Bowl.

Fireside Bowl’s booking would often result in post-hardcore, space rock, indie, metal and emo bands sharing bills, which also unwittingly provided a vast array of influences for the then-young band. “A lot of people didn’t hear it at first,” says Schroeder-Lebec of the band’s roots in a panoply of punk-related subgenres. “I was like, well, I guess the metal world is where we fit. But now we’re more willing to acknowledge all the suits we’re wearing.”

Recorded by longtime collaborator Sanford Parker, Flickering Resonance sees the band’s long-known thick sonic backbone remaining intact, but while demonstrating a more humanistic side for the band. 

“When Laurent left and we were able to carry it through, there became a real sense of gratitude for the fact we still have this artistic outlet and a community of people who want to support it,” the band’s Shelley de Brauw says of Schroeder-Lebec’s ten year sabbatical from the group. Fittingly, that feeling of deep, grounded appreciation doesn’t just reside within the band’s members, it’s expressed on every track of the album. 

Last month, I wrote about “Cascading Crescent,” a forceful, cinematic yet soulful ripper that recalls The Sword and others, while anchored around some scorching riffage and thunderous drumming. 

“Indelible,” Flickering Resonance‘s latest single continues a run of expansive, cinematic rippers that seemingly draws from desert and stoner rock, psych rock, Hawkwind and others, anchored around forcefully scorching and swaggering riffage paired with thunderous drumming and big hooks and choruses.

Much like its predecessor, “Indelible” is accompanying with a mind-bending psychedelic visual by multidisciplinary artist Joshua Ford that features geometric shapes and seemingly supernatural and natural phenomena.

The band announced a very special, early listening event with Chicago-based indie brewery Half Acre and Half Acre’s Second Setting Cannabis. The band will make an appearance at Half Acre’s Bowmanville brewery on Easter Sunday — cough, cough 4/20, baby — for a DJ set that will include a debut play through of the vinyl test pressings of the new album, along with a selection of favorite songs and other Pelican rarities. Half Acre will be serving pints of their terpene-infused Second Setting IPA and will be joined on-site by local cannabis purveyors Second Setting and the Budrisa Club. And the band will have special, very limited edition merch on hand, including an event-specific 4/20 shirt (limited to 50 prints), and the last remaining copies of the “Cascading Crescent” 7″ vinyl, which includes a B-side version of the song featuring Thursday’s Geoff Rickly.

 The members of the Chicago-based band are also currently in the middle of a lengthy tour to support the album. The tour includes a July 20, 2025 stop at The Meadows. Check out the rest of the tour dates below. 

Pelican tour dates
 
Pelican tour dates

Mar 18 Salt Lake City, UT – Metro Music Hall *

Mar 19 Englewood, CO – Gothic * SOLD OUT

Mar 21 Omaha, NE – Slowdown *

Mar 22 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line * SOLD OUT

Jul 17 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom +

Jul 18 Washington, DC – DC9 +

Jul 19 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts +

Jul 20 Brooklyn, NY – The Meadows +

Jul 21 Boston, MA – The Sinclair +

Jul 22 Montreal, QC – Bar le Ritz PDB +

Jul 23 Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace +

Jul 24 Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme +

Jul 25 – Indianapolis, IN – POST Fest +

Jul 26 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall +

Aug 8 Jaromer, CZ – Brutal Assault Festival

Aug 9 Sinzendorf, DE – Void Fest

Aug 10 Bochum, DE – Bahnhof Langendreer

Aug 11 Tilburg, NL – Hall of Fame

Aug 12 London, UK – The Dome

Aug 13 Manchester, UK – YES

Aug 14 Bristol, UK – Arctangent Festival

Aug 16 Carhaix Plouguer, FR – Motocultor Festival

* supporting Russian Circles

+ with Porcelain