Magical Mystery Tour

“There were periods where I absolutely hated the new songs we were writing,” begins PVT’s Richard Pike, whose Antipodean tones are forced to compete with a soundtrack of screaming fire alarms at the time of our interview. “I honestly started to freak out and thought that we’d made a huge mistake.”

The singer/guitarist/keyboard player is talking about his band’s latest offering, the spiralling Church With No Magic and his intentions to fuck with everyone’s head (including his own) in a bid to create something fresh and new. After a brief break to allow him to make sure his flat hasn’t burned down, he fully explains the thought process behind his band’s third album.
“One of our aims when we’re writing songs is to try and do something unexpected and oftentimes that means taking a listener somewhere unusual,” he reflects. “Everything was incredibly unfamiliar to us on this one, but then there comes a point where you see a light at the end of the tunnel and it gets really exciting again. Hopefully there are some moments that surprise the listener for better or for worse. We get a kick out of that from the music that we listen to, so that’s what we want to do ourselves.”
A willfully obtuse record, Church With No Magic is unlike any other release you’ll hear all year and sees the indie/electro trio not just throw away the rulebook, but set it on fire and hurtle it skywards.
“You do a lot of second guessing when you’re in a band. As I mentioned before, there were times when I wasn’t sure if I liked the new songs, but that’s all part of the creative process. We’ve got a group of friends around us who are all artists and musicians and they help out by giving us a fresh perspective on things.”
Despite being a daring but sometimes difficult album to digest, their third opus has been met with almost universal praise. However, ever the eternal square peg in a round hole, Richard confesses that he would secretly like the reception to be a little more mixed.
“When you finish a record you have that moment where you’ve no idea what people are going to make of it and literally there are moments where I thought everyone was going to hate it,” he laughs. “The reception’s been pretty good but I kinda want more people to hate it because I’m like, ‘Shit, are we going to have some kind of a backlash because everything is going so great?’ You kinda worry about stupid things like that because that’s the way it works. To be successful you need people hating you as well as loving you. I’ve read one review that was scathing and I was like, ‘Oh good. Someone hates it, that’s great.’”
This month the three-piece embark on a huge European tour and considering the band were previously known as Pivot the last time they visited these shores, we ask Richard if changing his band’s moniker to the snappier sounding PVT has confused anyone.
“Changing a band name is a stressful thing, but we had to do it because there’s an American band who are also called Pivot,” he responds. “You think, ‘Are people gonna come with us on this? Are they gonna care? Are they gonna forget about us because we’ve got a different name?’ You think of stupid things like that when you’re in a band, but generally everyone’s been pretty accepting. I think we’ve done a smart thing by not deviating too far from our original name. If we were suddenly called the Steely Cars it just wouldn’t work. It would feel like we put on a jacket that doesn’t fit us properly.”