There’s something deeply unsettling about revisiting the thoughts of your teenage self, that anxious kid scribbling in journals about death and meaning. For Pēlikel, the Montreal-based Lebanese trio, that confrontation became the foundation of their most ambitious work. Their EP ‘Okay, Maybe’ is a six-track reckoning with mortality, memory, and the strange beauty of simply existing.
“This project was written over the course of 5 years, and what I think was cool about revisiting these older tracks is that we kept them mostly intact,” explains vocalist and lyricist Kevin Semaan. “This keeps the lyrics sort of etched in that time period, and their meaning fossilized in childhood naivety. And I felt weirdly maternal towards the music when it came to preserving this essence. I know exactly what the kid who wrote them wanted to express, and am simply translating.”
That translation process resulted in a progressive tonal shift across the EP, starting understated and building toward thematic climax. “Since the last tracks on the record were the last to be composed, you notice the voice in the writing maturing,” Kevin notes. “The result is a progressive tonal shift that occurs as the EP evolves. Starting off in an understated whisper and only later building up to a thematic climax in the later half, as the speaker and the music both become more self-assured.”
The band’s approach to composition is intensely visual, almost cinematic. Joey Semaan, who handles guitar and shares production duties with Kevin, describes their methodology: “As a band, we tend to think of our music in terms of imagery. Song sections are almost like scenes with a specific subtext and goal. And sometimes that imagined scene influences the musical elements that come into play.” He points to the climax of closing track ‘Back to You’: “The final explosion in Back to You was always marked on the Cubase project with: ‘The second coming’. The sky is ripping open and you’re on fire and there’s a big eye peering down on you from behind the blue. A very visual description, that prompted Kevin to go in the vocal booth and let out an agonizing scream of despair into the mic. If, when you close your eyes, you can see that, then we know we made it.”
Getting there required meticulous attention to sonic detail. Roy Andraos, the band’s guitarist, explains the challenge: “Getting there, though, was tough. Because it meant filling the sonic spectrum with intention: whether that was 20+ vocal harmonies, a dialogue with mine and Joey’s guitar, or the constant rhythmic breathing that nearly made Kevin faint while recording. They’re not immediately perceivable, we want every listen of the EP to reveal something new. Simon did an amazing job at balancing it all.”
The band’s rejection of conventional song structures fuels that sense of discovery. “We rarely write by the verse-chorus formula,” Roy says. “Instead, we sort of let the music tell us where to go next. I think it’s this natural, instinctual evolution of the song that makes it inherently read as a journey.”
Joey elaborates: “That logic extends to the whole EP. The songs were not written in isolation. They kind of evolve from one another, structured like six chapters of a whole, with ups, downs, and turning points both musically and thematically. Both Kevin and I have a background in film, which helps. Composing for the band is similar to composing for the movies I score, we’re comfortable letting strings and textures take over when they need to.”
Even the smallest details serve the larger vision. “The cinematic feel also comes from the visuality that Joey mentioned earlier,” Kevin adds. “Even tiny sounds, like a tiny trill on the piccolo, in the grand scheme of things sounds banal, but it helps refine the edges of the image that we want to bring into focus, like a close-up of a leaf or a footstep in the mud. It’s really fun working that way, it adds a layer to production that transcends the music.”
The emotional weight of ‘Okay, Maybe’ stems from deeply personal territory. Kevin spent much of his childhood in hospitals, grappling with illness and mortality in ways that shaped the EP’s thematic core. “I was a sick kid growing up, spent a lot of time in hospitals, and thought about death a lot, in a way that was kind of selfish. I believed finality was better than persisting in pain, dramatic, I know. Making this record didn’t offer consolation so much as a slap in the face: a reminder that death is inevitable, the only certainty we get. But that slap helped me realize: it’s not that nothing matters, but that everything does.”
That realization crystallizes in the EP’s closing moments. “Back to You closes the EP by mourning the time wasted not caring, not being present. And the title, Okay Maybe, is a pause, a beat of reconsideration. Existing isn’t easy, and yet, look at the way the light hits the kitchen counter… it’s beautiful, and it’s so dumb. But that’s life.”
The band’s move from Beirut to Montreal added another layer of complexity to the creative process. “Of course, Montreal was an incredible whiplash of culture, the emotional weight that comes with moving is undeniable,” Kevin recalls. “It started with Roy, and then me in 2021. We lived together for a good 2 years during which new music practically wrote itself. We had tons of material reflecting all these new experiences. But I felt like I had unfinished business with the older songs. I don’t think I could’ve finished anything new without first tending to that existential dread. So I pitched those songs to the guys and we decided to rebuild from there, even while Joey was still in Lebanon.”
That geographic separation initially meant working remotely, passing tracks back and forth across continents. But when Joey finally relocated to Montreal in late 2023, everything changed. “When Joey finally came to Montreal in late 2023, and we played the songs together for the first time, the music sounded different… more alive, more honest,” Roy explains. “By that point, the EP had already been fully recorded and was in its final mixing stages. But it just didn’t feel like the version we wanted to put out anymore, something about the change of scenery…. So we made the call to rebuild it from scratch. It was a big step back technically, but a leap forward creatively. The best decision we’ve ever made.”
The band’s maximalist approach created challenges in the studio, where they worked with mixer Simon L’Espérance and mastering engineer Richard Addison. “Simon was my professor,” Joey notes. “Aside from being a great mixer, he’s also a member of the progressive rock band Karcius and a film composer. There was no question he was the right person for the mix. With this colossal amount of tracks, he chose to spotlight things in the mix that we’d never considered, which sparked a lot of conversation in the studio. There was a certain maximalism built into composing this EP, which definitely made for a challenge, but Simon really helped us tame it.”
Roy praises Addison’s work: “Richard Addison has mastered some great records, and it was a real honour to work with him. He struck a perfect balance on Back to You, especially preserving the heavy bass synth that I loved from the early GarageBand demo without overwhelming the mix. Expansiveness means a fundamental low end and plenty of room for the highs, he did it beautifully.”
Nearly everything written for the sessions made it onto the record, with one notable exception. “There wasn’t a single idea that we didn’t try, but looking at the EP as a whole, it became easier to know what fits,” Joey explains. One track, however, didn’t make the cut despite fitting thematically. “Like the rest, it came organically and fit beautifully between the fifth and sixth song in the thematic evolution. So, in theory, it should’ve stayed. But it came in an afterthought, production was technically done. In the end, it felt like a digression from the main course. That was a rare moment where we overruled the music. We had to decide what served the record as a whole. That track was a cherry on top… sweet, but maybe a little too sweet. Who knows, we love that track, we would love to perform it live. Maybe it’ll resurface one day, and you can tell us if we made the right choice.”
For the band, balancing experimentation with emotional authenticity comes down to instinct. “It all comes back to writing what feels like the logical next step,” Kevin says. “The song grows from a small idea, and we let it guide us without really knowing where it’ll take us. All three of us have distinct tastes in music, and we rarely say no to ideas in the writing room. Obviously, only the ideas that serve the song’s emotional core are the ones we commit to, so it’s not that we subject the emotion to experimentation, but quite the opposite. It’s the emotion that drives experimentation. And since every sonic shift is powered by the emotional core of the writing, then it cannot really be lost.”
Kevin hopes listeners approach the EP as a complete work. “I really do hope people approach the EP as a whole rather than a tracklist. It’s rare now to sit through an entire record and let its story unfold. The EP’s narrative happens in a single sitting, on the speaker’s bed, quietly spiraling between memory and imagination.” He describes it as “one of those achingly slow coming-of-age stories with a surrealist edge where nothing really happens, yet everything changes. Flickering memories: a day at the beach, eating brioche with wet hands and pruney fingers. Dozing on a couch in onesie pj’s while your parents watch the news way past bedtime. A thunderstorm outside, but morning is close, and a bowl of cereal awaits at the breakfast table.”
With the addition of keyboardist Leslie Torck, the band are preparing to translate the EP’s expansive studio sound to the stage. “With Leslie Torck recently joining us on the keys, we’re finding ways to translate the record’s textures and depth into a live performance,” Joey says. “He’s incredibly talented, we’re very stoked that he agreed to tag along. The goal is to create a show that captures the full scale and emotion of the EP.”
The band are also eager to return to earlier material shelved during the ‘Okay, Maybe’ sessions. “We’re also excited to jump back into writing,” Roy adds. “There’s a whole world of ideas from our earlier sessions that we can finally go back to and experiment with. It feels like there’s plenty of material to build on, and we’re really eager to see where it takes us.”
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