A (small) step away from post-rock and towards experimental pop.
Label: Warp Released: 9th August 2010 Reviewer:Dani Beck
Australian three piece PVT may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but in their vein of post-rock independent electronica they’re in good odour. With previous releases ‘Make Me Love You’ (2005) and ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’ (2008), both composed under their previous name Pivot (which they’ve had to change due to some US band claiming it), they’ve proven that instrumental music aside from electronic, danceable stuff does work on a stage, supporting big names like Sigur Rós and Arctic Monkeys.
In the past year though, there have been some changes. Gone are the vowels from their name, but in return, vocals have appeared; a (small) step away from post-rock and towards experimental pop. Opener ‘Community’ doesn’t give that away though. It opens a dark, spacey something, that will only disappear when the album ends, and captures the listener with its hymnal vocals. It’s on title track ‘Church With No Magic’ where the pop element first shines through. It’s still experimental, a little strange, but there’s a melody hidden between all those sounds. Unfortunately PVT don’t pick up this element for the whole record.
The most outstanding - and also most accessible - song is without a doubt ‘Window’. It actually makes you wonder why guitarist Richard Pike didn’t picked up the microphone earlier. It’s almost a shame the band seems to lose themselves too much in their fiddly, nervous musical experiments when they’re able to create sweeping, thrilling songs like this one. There’s something fascinating about the expansive, sinister spaces their songs open, but whenever those little melodies shine through all the thundering drums and mechanic beats, you just want more of them, but they fade and disappear too quickly.
But then, of course, there’s the old PVT / Pivot fans. And ‘Church With No Magic’ isn’t a big step away from the forerunner albums. ‘Waves & Radiation’ creates the image of floating through an old industrial building, ‘Timeless’ trickles five minutes steadily out of the speakers, the vocals reduced and morphed into sounds that blend in with computer-generated noise, and on ‘Circle Of Friends’ the vocals even function as beats.
‘Church With No Magic’ seems to be hermetically sealed, only opening the proverbial gates now and then, so it doesn’t always manage to capture the listener entirely. But it doesn’t have to. And it’s almost funny that the one song which is the most engrossing is called ‘Window’ – as if PVT let the listener look through one, taking a peek at their own little cosmos.Rating: 6/10
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