Rolling Stone story: ‘PVT Lose Vowels, Add Vocals For Third Album’, July 2010

A story for the August 2010 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

PVT Lose Vowels, Add Vocals For Third Album

International success brings up a few new challenges for edgy Sydney trio
By Andrew McMillen

For an international touring act, one of the unfortunate side-effects of building a respected profile is an increased likelihood of coming to the attention of those opposed to your ascent. Sydney-based rock/electronica hybrid Pivot became familiar with this situation first-hand upon arriving in the United States for SXSW in March. Ahead of the release of their third album, the trio were forced to either rename their band, or face a lengthy court battle to determine the rightful owner of the Pivot name. Their solution? Drop the vowels. “It’s more efficient, like Kraftwerk,” jokes the band’s synth/electronics manipulator, Dave Miller.

He rationalises the decision to become PVT. “We were issued with a cease and desist letter. It was probably going to be extremely costly to fight, and the potential of losing a court battle was not really appealing. If we wanted to keep the name so badly, it could have cost us loads of money and we’d have to put the album back a year because of some righteous American emos who think they deserve the name more. We figured we’d do a cut-and-dry type thing.”

Church With No Magic – out on July 19 via Warp/Inertia Records – will be their first release under the PVT moniker. It’s a departure from their 2008 album O Soundtrack My Heart, as the trio have opted to include vocals, courtesy of Richard Pike. Miller explains: “We could’ve quite easily done another instrumental album like the last one – O Soundtrack My Heart II– but that would’ve been done in 3 months. To write with vocals in mind was a challenge; after being in a touring band for 18 months altogether, we realised we don’t really listen to much instrumental rock music at all, so we were like, ‘If we don’t listen to it, why are we making it?'”

The Church recording sessions differ significantly from the band’s previous experience, wherein Miller contributed to O Soundtrack remotely while living in London. This time around, he and the Pike brothers – drummer Laurence and guitarist, producer, and now vocalist Richard – recorded “almost everything” in the same room. “It has a real live feeling about it; it sounds like three guys in a room, and I like to think it sounds like all our live shows have over the past year. There’s mistakes, there’s bombastic drums, and lots of air in the room. For this record, we made a point to not sand off the edges, to keep it a bit more live and raw. It was recorded digitally, but we weren’t chopping up drums and guitars so that everything fits perfectly and sounds like fucking U2. We didn’t want to do that. We just wanted to leave it as we played it.”

Listen to PVT on their MySpace; view the video for the first Church With No Magic single, ‘Window‘ below.

Post Category: Music Journalism, Published Writing | Tags: australia, church-with-no-magic, dave-miller, inertia, Interview, o-soundtrack-my-heart, pivot, Published Writing, pvt, rolling stone, warp