"City of Echoes" by Pelican

    Gone are the Melvins-esque drones of Pelican’s self-titled EP, the Neurosis-like brutality of Australasia, and the sensitivity of Isis on The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw.  Instead, the Chicago instrumental group’s third LP, City of Echoes, sounds like the album Judas Priest would have recorded after seeing Smashing Pumpkins at the Metro in 1994 and forgot to call Rob Halford. 
    Pelican’s first two albums were filled with post metal epics that averaged between eight and eleven minutes in length. Their EP March Into The Sea comprises of two songs, one of which is twenty minutes long.  On City of Echoes, the longest song is just seven minutes. This is not the same Pelican that recorded their prior albums.  Sure, the same members are all present, but in a different mindset. 
    Having built a reputation for powerful instrumentals which played out in beautiful narrative structures, Pelican have downplayed their style for a simpler sounding album. One noticeable difference is how the album jumps right into the first track “Bliss In Concrete”, a straightforward five and a half minutes of heavy riffing: unlike “Nightendday”, the first track on their heaviest album Australasia, which builds and builds to what essentially is an eleven minute jam session. 
    Rather than take us down a road with winds and turns, they choose the straight and narrow for a more generic rock record.  You certainly will find yourself bobbing yourself bobbing your head to many of the songs on here.  “Dead Between the Walls” is by far the bands catchiest song yet, while the acoustic “Winds With Hands” is just as energetic as any other song on the album.  But to call the album a “failure” in any way would be unfair to the band; they have openly said that they were going for a sound with more hooks and shorter songs while still writing large scale songs.  Guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec said that the band wanted to be able to play more songs in their 75 minute live sets rather than just five 15 minute songs.  City of Echoes plays more as an album best listened to while cruising with friends in a car on Saturday night; more specifically, it’d probably be one of the cassette tapes the characters in Wayne’s World had ready to throw on in the opening scene. 
    The final track, “A Delicate Sense of Balance”, shows that Pelican may find just that: balance.  This is a song which slowly grows from soft to loud in typical post metal fashion in five minutes. It is a summarized version of their typical style, which is exactly what the band set out to create. 
    With that said, City of Echoes is an album best taken with a grain of salt.  The heavy rockers are catchy, but the record doesn’t stretch much farther than that.  This is the sound of a band trying to explore their capabilities.  It’s not necessarily a bad album, it just isn’t a great Pelican album.

College "A Real Hero" EP

  

    Often times we have heard a song or seen a movie that seems like it belongs in another decade.  College’s 2010 EP A Real Hero could be described as one of the those albums that was released 30 years late.  The synthesizers reminds us of flashy 80’s cop TV shows as well as John Hughes soundtracks.  What is most important about A Real Hero is that not only does it sound like a product of 1984, but it does so while remaining a serious work and not being ironic.
    Part of the French dance music collective Valerie, College follows up his Teenage Color album with this tribute to 80's soundtracks. The title track off the EP is the only one with vocals, sung by Electric Youth (a nod to Debbie Gibson’s 1989 single of the same name).  The song is about growing up and becoming, as the song says, “A real human being.”  “A Real Hero” could easily have been left off of one of John Hughes’ soundtrack albums, playing over Molly Ringwald’s Sixteen Candles table-top birthday celebration or the freeze frame fist pump of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club.  The rest of the album plays more as a soundtrack album by Tangerine Dream for an early Michael Mann TV show.  The cover art is an image of what seems like title credit’s to a cheesy cop show played on a now antique television.
    What is most admirable about College’s A Real Hero is that it treats itself as a serious collection of work.  It is dramatic while still employing countless hooks.  Where some bands use schizophrenic beats and playful lyrics over their instruments, College obviously loves the style and knows where he is pulling from.  The title track was recently featured in the film Drive: expect it to become a post modern classic to be held up with the songs of the past it pays tribute to.