Pelican

Pelican is a dreamlike art-metal institution, a band whose kaleidoscopic melodies and ocean-dredging riffs have now hypnotized audiences for more than two decades. Emerging from the frozen tundras of Chicago, Pelican were early adopters in blending post-rock’s majestic repetition with sludge metal’s skull-vibrating bluster, adding their own singular sense of keening emo-psychedelia and heavy-metal motorik. Since then, their prismatic instrumental mesmerism has rippled across six critically acclaimed studio albums, soundtracked episodes of CSI: Miami and True Blood, and could even be spotted on MTV during the waning days of music video.

Pelican will once again be hitting the road in 2022, emerging from the shadows of the pummeling bleakness of 2019’s Nighttime Stories. Following the departure of long-standing guitarist Dallas Thomas, the band will be joined on upcoming dates with founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, reuniting the classic Pelican lineup behind albums like 2005’s landmark The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. That album — along with Pelican’s spiraling debut Australasia (2003) and their bludgeoning breakthrough City of Echoes (2007) — are getting the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment thanks to Thrill Jockey, re-illuminating the band’s first three albums with rarities, unreleased outtakes, demos and remastered audio.