(2017) PVT - New Spirit
Review:
From their name to the wildly different sounds they’ve explored over their nearly two-decade career, PVT is all about surprising shifts. They delivered one of their most radical changes with 2013’s Homosapien, a surprisingly poppy set of songs that put Richard Pike’s voice front and center and drew comparisons to everyone from Gang of Four to INXS. On New Spirit, PVT swings away from that pop peak — but not entirely. Instead, they subvert the structures and hooks of their previous album, and the metallic percussion and insistent arpeggiated synths that provide New Spirit‘s core feel like tangible expressions of the way the band bends and breaks the boundaries between pop and experimental music. Nowhere is this clearer than on the album’s centerpiece: Full of seething synths and Pike’s mournfully robotic vocals, “Morning Mist Rock Island Bend” is a taut, nine-minute excursion that echoes Fever Ray and early-’80s Peter Gabriel. Since PVT spent years as a contemplative post-rock band, it’s not surprising that New Spirit‘s instrumentals are just as compelling as the songs with vocals; “Spirit of the Plains” suggests wide swathes of land with galloping arpeggios. However, the band continues the more emotional, accessible feel of Homosapien on highlights such as “A Feeling You Can Find,” “Salt Lake Heart,” and “Fake Sun in China,” all of which fizz with barely suppressed energy.
New Spirit‘s shifts from experimental to pop and back again aren’t always smooth, but they prove once again that PVT’s unpredictability is reliably fascinating.
Tracklist:
01 - Spirit of the Plains.flac
02 - A Feeling You Can Find.flac
03 - Salt Lake Heart.flac
04 - Interlude.flac
05 - Another Life.flac
06 - Fool in Rain II.flac
07 - Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend.flac
08 - Kangaroo.flac
09 - Murder Mall.flac
10 - New Spirit.flac
11 - Fake Sun in China.flac
Summary:
Country: Australia
Genre: electronic, post-rock
Media Report:
Source : CD
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : ~ 558-907 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
