The Brag

PVT
Everything In Its Right Place
By Laurence Rosier Staines

Dave Miller of PVT will neither confirm nor deny that soul star Seal will be present at their Vivid performance this year: “He’s an enigma. He can turn up wherever he likes … he’s Seal.” This bizarre equivocation comes in response to my queries about a baffling video that the band put on their Facebook page, wherein Miller claims that the Grammy-winner will be in attendance: “He’s a big fan. Finally we’re in the same city together, so perhaps we might see if he wants to come on stage too,” Miller ruminates, before bandmate Laurence Pike wearily refutes him: “I don’t know where he’s getting this from. Seal’s not coming to the show.”

If such rampant speculation is meant to drum up greater anticipation for their gig, there’s hardly any need. PVT’s first show since last year’s Harvest festival will be a one-off Opera Theatre performance at Vivid LIVE previewing their forthcoming fourth record, with new arrangements of the band’s older songs, a horn section, and a specially designed light show that Miller is working out with visual designers. “It’s going well,” he says. “You don’t want everything being mechanical – and there will still be moments of improvisation – but most things I play will dictate sound and light, which is cool. I realise how nerdy lighting directors are. It’s quite mathematical.”

With such a love of precision and subtle polyrhythm, the math side comes more easily to PVT than to most. From their early, almost math-jazz excursions (“Math-jazz is a bloody awful term,” Miller says, “but I understand what you mean.”) to ethereal post-rock, to their more driving and vocal-dominated last album Church With No Magic, PVT have always mixed things up. But these days they seem to have fixed on one direction. “I think the next record will be even further away from that [early stuff]. The songs are much more considered and spacious, far less tech-y… Much more about the moment and the sentiment than technical know-how.”
In line with this shift, the new album will showcase an even greater contribution from Richard Pike, who’s been warming up to his role as PVT’s vocalist for a few albums now. “Because there’s less going on [musically], there’s much more room for everything to breathe, including the vocals,” Miller explains. “I think the last record was so busy, with so much going on, that the voice struggled to have a presence… It was always going to be a learning curve. Not that that album’s a relic or anything, but in some ways it was a stepping stone to what we’re going to put out next. With the new stuff, we’re much more relaxed about what we’re doing and how we do it. Everything has its place and its time.”

PVT’s intentions with the new album can be contrasted to that of their experimental rock peers Battles, whose 2011 album Gloss Drop was their first after the departure of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton: “I listened to it once and I didn’t really get into it,” Miller admits. “It seemed like it wasn’t as thought out as it should have been, and the vocal tracks didn’t make much sense to me either.” Unlike the New York band, PVT seem to be self-consciously entering a realm of clearly-defined songs, with lyrics that work on more levels than just the textural. “Because of the way our new songs are, there’s a lot more focus on words… You can hear them so clearly that it’s important to get them right.”

Indeed, the whole method of songwriting for this album has meant changes for the band that went right down to the drumming. “There are parts, in the sense that [Laurence] is playing the rhythm that’s the rhythm of the song … [whereas] the previous couple of albums were basically stitched together from jams, taking the best parts and making songs out of them. It was much more of a weird cut-and-paste thing. With the new one, Laurence can sit on a beat and not do anything for a few bars, rather than having to do something interesting all the time.”

Elements of PVT’s break with their past have come more out of necessity than anything else. I ask about their disowning of the first album Make Me Love You at the Church With No Magic launch (“We’re going to play songs that are actually good,” Dave proclaimed onstage). “There are only two members left of what was then a five-piece band. We actually can’t play a lot of it. And you know, even if we did, it wouldn’t sound the same. I don’t know if people would be stoked with us doing different versions of songs that they loved. Thus far we’ve decided not to. It’s like that classic Regurgitator song [‘I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff’]. I’m the same when I’m a punter, in that there are always certain sounds you’d like a band to keep doing.”

With the band’s imminent return to Vivid after four years, Miller is buzzing. “It’s cool to be playing there again, and this time with our OWN show, which means a lot more. In the internet generation, being at a show is one of the last standing things that you can’t download. You can download a recording of a concert, but if the band has a horn section and a mad lighting rig, that’s not something you’re gonna be able to recreate.”

Where: Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House
When: Friday May 25