PVA – Blush Review

Powering through with a future-like dance-pop piece, PVA marks Blush as a debut piece to be reckoned with. Elements of harsh and intimate acid house styles strike through with little love for the listener. There is a metallic feel to Blush, and it is strikingly strange. A collision of ideas and elements that come together on a debut piece shows a group continuing to define and find themselves. Their alternative synthpop style is intense, intimidating and brilliant in spots. Untethered. Not just a great title for their opening track, but a similar feel to the music found within this debut album, an Untethered ability to communicate real dance pop fears in a darker-than-usual genre beat.

Moments within that opening track, and scattered throughout this stellar release, are EBM sentimentalities. Those who need to move their bodies through music are in luck, Blush has them in mind. Untethered has an exceptional outro that lends itself to being lost in the flow of good music. Kim is a standard loss where the beat and bass are reserved, but perseverance is needed. Those album tracks stand out far more than the singles associated with Blush. There is a similarity that pushes through on most of the tracks – a lack of variance that kills off the next step PVA will surely take in future. Hero Man is a lighter step with a few limited variances on an interesting core sound. But it is that simplicity that takes hold best of all, especially before an undeserved Interlude.

After that brief moment, PVA are back with full force on Bunker, an ominous and conspiratorial track that takes its chances with living underground. Preying on fear with good rhythm, repeating “stockpile” as a lyrical choice brings new flavour to the worries of the world. Electropop-style dance beats have seen a chilling and entertaining resurgence this year, and there are moments throughout The Individual that pair up nicely with Acid Klaus’ debut piece, Step On My Travelator. PVA and Acid Klaus have grand and swaying differences, but they also make for nice accompanying pieces. It is no surprise that The Individual is the high point of this varied and lush-sounding piece. Electronic music and its resurgence into the pop mainstream is as exciting as it is dangerous for surround sound systems.

Solid first efforts are hard to come by, although 2022 is worryingly stuffed full of them. Blush is another quality debut piece that sees PVA off to a good start. If the peak of dance-punk is that of LCD Soundsystem, then PVA has some ways to go before they compete with the best, but that feels like an inevitable stage for their work on Blush, which goes from solid strength to solid strength. Gold standards await PVA, whose promising debut is not without merit. Strong tracks Transit and Seven are where their sound really takes hold of the listener, breathes deep and fires through with some active, promising works. Blush is the right start, a debut album worth sticking around for, but there is more to come. PVA’s abilities are scratched at here, there is something lurking beneath the surface.