PVT – Church With No Magic

Australian trio PVT (formerly known as Pivot) occupy a strange position in these days of internet hype and push: quietly doing their post-rock/electronic thing, they tend to be greeted with pockets of praise rather than any waves of acclaim. Their debut LP O Soundtrack My Heart received warm reviews upon its release in 2008, with a cinematic, layered sound that drew favourable comparisons to musicians such as Vangelis and Battles.

The follow-up, Church With No Magic, sees them tweak their sound somewhat. The most significant change is the prominence of vocals: O Soundtrack My Heart was a predominantly instrumental affair, but here Richard Pike’s voice features on the majority of the ten tracks. For the most part, these vocals tend to be of the ominous, sombre variety – more chanted than sung. This would seem to suit a musical approach that tends toward the mechanistic, with imposing, sweeping synths, pulsing grooves and jittery vocal samples.

Church With No Magic certainly doesn’t lack for technically impressive musicianship. The percussion in particular stands out, often providing the driving force on tracks like ‘The Quick Mile’ and ‘Light Up Bright Fires’. The filmic quality of their compositions is also still present and correct, with darkly atmospheric synth lines and echoing, cavernous production. However, there’s something a bit too cold and clinical about it all. The addition of the aforementioned vocals has unfortunate results for PVT’s sound: the proggy tendencies that were always present in their music before are accentuated, while the music seems somehow less open-ended, less suggestive: the open spaces hitherto filled by your imagination are essentially filled in for you.

PVT recently covered Grizzly Bear’s  ‘Colorado’, and you can hear some of the Brooklyn band’s influence in the harmonic emphasis on ‘Window’ and ‘Circle Of Friends’. But again, it seems awkward and detached, a cog in a machine that’s not as well-oiled as it could be. Often throughout the album you feel as if something big is about to happen, only for a song to peter out or give way to an overblown, heavy-handed climax. There’s certainly nothing here that sounds as fluid and evocative as previous highpoint ‘In The Blood’ did. Ultimately, PVT have created an album that impresses in patches, but is very hard to love.