Just months after offering fans a scintillating preview of their new album with the March into the Sea EP, Pelican unleash their second full length effort, The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. March into the Sea contained a 20 minute work up of the title track, which appears here in shorter form, as well as a Justin Broderick remix of the Australasia track “Angel Tears”. At 32 minutes long, March into the Sea was one hell of an appetizer, but fans will relish every ounce of this new effort, and if March into the Sea had you penciling in The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw onto your year end list of favorites, you can ditch the pencil and get out the black magic-fucking-marker.

Like close sonic cousins Isis, Pelican have a distinctly elemental vibe, providing the scenic aerials to compliment Isis’ oceanic tides. The songs soar weightlessly across expansive skies, while the band winds layer upon intricate layer over the framework until the weight is too much for their structures to bare, sending them crashing earthward, twisting and spiraling passionately as they go, equally resenting and relishing their actualization. The open, airy feel is further served by the manner in which the band sculpts the trajectory of the songs, subtly adding texture and density until the songs redline into passionate, tightly wound acrobatics. The transitions are sublime, both in reaching apex and gracefully shifting from crescendo. Pelican stick and move, firing off measures of mouth watering runs and riffs before abandoning one course in favor of building to another, guaranteeing several speaker pointing “that part right there? I fucking love that part” responses from the listener. You know that response? I fucking love that response.

“March into the Sea” has been cleaved in half, the second, atmospheric half undergoing the knife in favor of the fierce, roiling dive bombing of the first. The band takes the polar approach for “Aurora Borealis”, which has the slow turning, antigravity spaciness that the title suggests. “Untitled” has a similarly low key, acoustic bent that somehow manages to be simultaneously insistent and blissful. The longer tracks (five, including “March”) are opulently dynamic, balancing equal measures of billowy atmosphere and dense heft, culminating with the affirming head nodder “Sirius”. Pelican’s evolution from the dense, choppy (but still entirely enjoyable) arrangements from their first self titled EP is highly impressive. The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw is an expertly conceived and executed work, stretching the bounds and shattering the glass ceiling of the instrumental construct. One of the finest albums, of any genre, that you will hear this year.