PVT
PVT – New Spirit
Have you seen the filth and grit on the electric cars of Paris? Bodily fluids on the back seats. No one cleans them. Beacons of…
PVT – New Spirit
Have you seen the filth and grit on the electric cars of Paris? Bodily fluids on the back seats. No one cleans them. Beacons of a new era sat plugged into the street little more than rental gunmetal shells that someone’s pissed in. Or the moth infested wind turbines of Bavaria? Beautiful, cumbersome, monoliths – today’s clean energy generators, dominating classical landscapes now unrecognisable from their painted counterparts.
We’ve all heard the poisoned dialogue between the heavy left and right feet of political power. A blindfolded dawdle. To them forward is a waste of money. Forward is fake. Make believe. A shiny distant myth better left for another time. Why move on from what’s still generating warm, sweaty money? Still, it’s important to note these icons of progress. These green, contrary attempts at escape. They’re the future. Our future isn’t going to be polished glass and white surfaces. It’s going to be dirty.
And the worst kind of grime won’t be the kind you find when they drain the lake. It’ll be in the air. In the words we use. In the dismissal of truth and history for the sake of a stomachable narrative.
With that in mind, I present to you – ‘New Spirit’ – the latest record by PVT.
PVT are international, though they’re known as Pivot to anyone in the know. They’re an act that’s embraced technology at every turn – gritty, new, confronting – and their uncompromised songwriting and musical understanding have seen their first four albums released to global acclaim. They’ve been all over, both on their own steam and in the support of acts like The Arctic Monkeys, Gary Numan, Warpaint, Bloc Party, and Gotye. After years of touring the band wound up cast far and wide residing each in a different continent. Men of the world. Seasoned campaigners.
2017 sees members Dave Miller along with brothers Richard & Laurence Pike return home, with their fifth album. Ask em why it was so long between drinks? They’ll tell it’s you none of your business. Ask what brought the three of them back together and they’ll say the same thing. Though one listen to their latest album ‘New Spirit’ suggests a compass-directed hometown reunion, in what has become a
hotbed for political and cultural intolerance: The New Australia.
This album contains that beautiful type of music written out of compulsion. Out of need. No label saying “we need album five” just a calling and an impulse to explore the new place that Australia has become. Australia. The sun comes in hot down here. Casting long, long, shadows. The lucky country has succumbed to divisive politics and irrational fear. Obvious fraud and immorality driven by a gutless media and an indifferent public. But on the fringe there is a new movement. One that’s gathering steam. It’s hopeful. Beautiful. Confronting in its peaceful spirit.
This is PVT’s home town and they’re back to set things straight.
PVT have been in an on going scrap with their status for years. Their uncompromising approach to musical self-determination has seen them battling labels, trends and sometimes their own audience. Chin-scratching white men with dreadlocks. Warp records disciples. They’ve come away veterans, masters in a precise, musical, and beautiful violence. But the content, the meaning, has never been this sharp, and especially never this political.
The new album once again sees frontman Richard Pike tussle with his boundaries, and he certainly isn’t afraid to go to the mats. The sound of the record itself is that of a stark digital future, but under the surface there’s a nostalgia for a different time, another way of thinking, another life. These are guys who do what they want, because they can, because they’re that good. PVT are exploring. Expanding on expectations. They carry with them the bravery and courage of the old explorer with the tolerance and understanding of the new. And they want you to join them.
Why step forward? Why continue to grow?
For progress. For the future. For a different way. For something new. Something exciting. Something in spite of the old.
New Spirit.