ALBUM REVIEW: PVA – BLUSH

By Resonate | December 17, 2022

Words by Finch Evans

To misquote Steve Coogan’s Tony Wilson, “the histories of dance and indie music are a double helix when one movement is in its descendancy, the other is ascending” – yet in a double helix there are the moments in which the two strands collide. We’ve seen these collisions of ravers and rockers in the baggy Madchester explosion of the late ’80’s and early ’90s, and in the indie-sleaze dance rock of acts like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and LCD Soundsystem in the 2000s and 2010s. This humble Resonate reporter believes that if the strands haven’t already intertwined, they’re more than likely eyeing each other up for another mighty collision.

Evidence for this can be found in PVA’s debut album BLUSH. Many songs on the album start off sounding similar to the litany of post-punk records we’ve been hearing for the last five or so years, with spacious mixes based around one of the vocalist’s half-sung, half-spoken esoteric lyrics. 

Maybe the drums sound a little more electronic, and there may be a splattering of arpeggiated synth somewhere in there but a couple of seconds into the first track and everything seems to be following the trends of early 2020’s indie music. Then the space is filled with screeching, alarm-like synths, and the song erupts into a dark industrial techno groove that evokes the lights of club nights rather than the sticky floors of indie venues.

The dark industrial synths and half-moaned vocal deliveries on this album can suggest a certain animalistic nature to the album. However, BLUSH’s lyrics go far deeper than pure carnality. The sexuality at the surface level of this album seems to be a mask covering a search for emotional connection. This is beautifully exposed away towards the end of the record when the song Transit finishes with a stripped-back vulnerable moment as Ella Harris and an acoustic guitar heartbreakingly recontextualize the hook of the track.