Tag: Sanford Parker

Video by William Ruben Helms

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.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Chicago’s Pelican Shares Cinematic and Expansive “Cascading Crescent”

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 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 o deep, grounded appreciation doesn’t just reside within the band’s members, it’s expressed on every track of the album.

The album’s latest single “Cascading Crescent” is a forceful, cinematic and yet soulful ripper that reminds me a bit of The Sword and others, anchored around some scorching riffage and thunderous drumming.
 
The members of the Chicago-based band will be embarking on a lengthy touring schedule to support the album that includes a July 20, 2025 stop at The Meadows. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: FACS Shares Tense and Probing “You Future”

Chicago-based post-punk outfit and JOVM mainstays FACS‘ sixth studio album Wish Defense is slated for a February 7, 2025 release on CD, cassette, black vinyl and a limited white vinyl variant while supplies last [pre-order] through Trouble In Mind Records. 

The album marks the return of original band member Jonathan Van Herik, who replaces longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba. Van Herik’s return to the band reportedly brings renewed vigor and a marked angularity from the Chicago-based outfit’s more recent output. While the songs still hit hard, the approach is sideways; in fact, the roles have changed since Van Herik’s original tenure and previous time with Case and Leger in Disappears. Now on bass, Van Herik was originally the band’s guitarist while Case, the band’s current guitarist, played bass. The role reversal between Case and Van Herik has reportedly helped the band’s dynamic, offering a different musical perspective than before, while revisiting the trio’s long-held collaboration with some distance and time. 

Tragically, Wish Defense is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days of sessions were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May, before Albini’s untimely death. Renowned engineer and friend Sanford Parker stepped in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the album’s material as Albini would have, in Electrical Audio’s A Room, off the tape, using Albini’s notes about the session. 

Thematically, the album focuses on the centuries old subject of the duality of man. Who is your “true self” and what do they want? The album sees the band taking a good long look in the mirror to face themselves. As the band’s Brian Case explains, the album’s lyrical content revolves about doppelgängers or doubles, tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release next month, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Wish Defense,” the album’s title track. Anchored around an angular and forceful bass line from Van Herik, off-kilter and propulsive rhythmic patterns from Leger and Case’s squiggling and chiming guitar lines while featuring one of Case’s more melodic vocal turns in some time and a slow-burning, noisy coda. The song also continues the Chicago-based outfit’s long-held reputation for writing material that’s psychologically probing with Case laying out the entire album’s theme in one stanza, asking the listening — and in turn, himself: Are your actions and emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that “other” person you put forward into the world? Case says that ultimately, the sentiment is ” . . . don’t let the bastards get you down, there’s something beyond this moment, like hope — but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good.”

  • “Desire Path” a song that sees the band pairing woozy and swirling guitar textures, squiggling guitar bursts and a punchily delivered mantra-like lyric paired with a forceful and percussive rhythm section. The song evokes a claustrophobic sense of unease; of walls both psychological and real closing in on you. 

Wish Defense’s third and latest single, album closing track “You Future” continues a run of tense, uneasy yet psychologically probing material anchored around an expansive song structure that reminds the listener of the individual musicians remarkably expressive, forceful playing.

Thematically, the song sees the band asking ‘Are you the same as you were?” “The final track is also the final action, look in the mirror and ask the questions. It’s a future self talking to a ‘you’ from the past, assessing the path up until this point, questioning who you are,” FACS’ Brian Case explains. “We bookended the album with the two songs that felt the most vulnerable and I think that really works with this idea of examining and challenging who you are and the perception of who you are.”

The accompanying video draws from the album’s cover art as it features the checkerboard motif and eyes that constantly peer back at the viewer.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: FACS Shares Angular “Wish Defense”

Back in 2013, Chicago-based post-punk act Disappears — founding member Brian Case (vocals, guitar) along with  Noah Leger (drums), Jonathan Van Herik (guitar) and Damon Carruesco (bass) — released two of my favorite efforts of the past decade or so: the atmospheric and tempestuous Kone EP and the tense, raging Era.

Damon Carruesco left the band in 2017. The band’s remaining members — Case, Leger and Van Herik — decided to continue onward, but under a new name and with a decidedly new sonic direction and songwriting approach as FACS.

With their FACS full-length debut, 2018’s Negative Houses, the trio quickly established an intense, cathartic, heavy sound — that’s not always obviously heavy. Since then the band has gone through a couple of lineup changes: Alianna Kalaba (bass) replaced van Herrik for a handful of the band’s albums. including last year’s Still Life in Decay, a decidedly focused effort that saw the band at what may arguably be their most solidified. The apocalyptic chaos of the album’s predecessor was pushed away in favor of examination with a remarkably uneasy clarity, while being a sort of addendum to 2021’s Present Tense. The album, which featured tracks like “When You Say” and “Slogan,” was the last album to feature Kalaba, who amicably left the band.

The Chicago-based post-punk outfit and JOVM mainstays’ sixth studio album Wish Defense is slated for a February 7, 2025 release on CD, cassette, black vinyl and a limited white vinyl variant while supplies last [pre-order] through Trouble In Mind Records.

The album marks the return of original band member Jonathan Van Herik, who replaces longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba. Van Herik’s return to the band reportedly brings renewed vigor and a marked angularity from the Chicago-based outfit’s more recent output. While the songs still hit hard, the approach is sideways; in fact, the roles have changed since Van Herik’s original tenure and previous time with Case and Leger in Disappears. Now on bass, Van Herik was originally the band’s guitarist while Case, the band’s current guitarist, played bass. The role reversal between Case and Van Herik has reportedly helped the band’s dynamic, offering a different musical perspective than before, while revisiting the trio’s long-held collaboration with some distance and time.

Tragically, Wish Defense is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days of sessions were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May, before Albini’s untimely death. Renowned engineer and friend Sanford Parker stepped in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the albums as Albini would have, in Electrical Audio’s A Room, off the tape, using Albini’s notes about the session.

Thematically, the album focuses on the centuries old subject of the duality of man. Who is your “true self” and what do they want? The album sees the band taking a good long look in the mirror to face themselves. As the band’s Brian Case explains, the album’s lyrical content revolves about doppelgängers or doubles, tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations.

Anchored around an angular and forceful bass line from Van Herik, funky yet forcefully off-kilter rhythmic patterns from Leger, Case’s squiggling and chiming guitar lines paired with a slow-burning, noisy coda and arguably one of Case’s more melodic vocal turns in some time. Fittingly, it continues the band’s long-held reputation for material that’s psychologically probing with Case laying out the entire album’s theme in one stanza, asking the listener — and in turn himself: Are your actions and emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that “other” person you put forward into the world? Case says that ultimately, the sentiment is ” . . . don’t let the bastards get you down, there’s something beyond this moment, like hope — but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good.”

Directed by Joshua Ford, starring Megan Paradowski, the accompanying video for “Wish Defense” was filmed at Los Angeles-based XIX Studio and plays along with the song’s thematic and lyrical concerns: While Paradowski expressively dances throughout, we see doubling — whether through shadow, visual effect or slick editing.