STREAM PELICAN’S NEW ALBUM ATARAXIA/TARAXIS IN FULL, STOP BITCHING ABOUT THEIR DRUMMER

I just checked out The A.V. Club’s stream of Pelican’s new album Ataraxia/Taraxis, and for some bizarre reason I decided to do something I rarely ever do on any site: read the comments. Mistake. No less than 50% of the comments on the post are bitchfests about Pelican’s drummer, and judging from the tone, this is a common complaint about the band.

To thee I say: what the fuck? Larry Herweg strikes me as a perfectly serviceable drummer, perfect for Pelican’s music. He’s not playing blast beats or insane tom fills or polyrhythms or anything, but he’s playing what the rest of the band’s music demands of him; Pelican’s music is pretty un-technical in nature (not that there’s anything wrong with that, at all), and as such Herweg’s drumming is too. Overly complex drumming just wouldn’t fit underneath this stuff. Come on, people! Not everyone can be a friggin’ drum machine.

Anyway, you can and should stream Ataraxia/Taraxis in the Soundcloud player below, via The A.V. Club. Despite my previous gripe about the downgrade in production quality from Pelican’s last two efforts, the slow, groovy riffs on this jam are getting stuck in my brain this morning in a serious way. The album comes out officially through Southern Lord on April 10th.

-VN