Bands like to shock. And heck, we like to be shocked. The first taste of a new album is the perfect landscape to toy with expectations, but sometimes a band is more concerned with story than single. Sometimes a band comes back like PVRIS. Subtle and with plenty of space, there’s a relax to ‘Heaven’ that sets things up rather than burning them down. “We were just thinking of what would make the most sense with the record,” starts Lynn Gunn backstage at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire fresh from offering us a handful of skittles. “We have been calm and confident,” she offers. There’s belief in what they’re doing and for good reason. “You have to. If you don’t, you have to invent a gimmick to make it work, and we don’t want to have to do that. The music speaks for itself.”
The band, as always, know more than they let on. They know there’s a joy in the discovery and they’re never out to spoil that. At one point Lynn accidentally reveals the band will be returning to the UK for a big headline tour (“oops”), but apart from that, their secrets remain between the three of them. They want everyone to experience the adventure. They’ve been watching the reaction to ‘Heaven’ - a song that “felt so good to put out because we had no clue what to expect” - carefully. “I try not to expect things,” admits Alex Babinski, before Lynn adds: “But you always want to hope. It’s all been so positive. We’re all super proud of this record. We’re stoked, and I’m hoping it can translate to other people. I have a feeling it might,” she adds with a glint in her eye and a knowing smile.
After years on the road trying to keep up with the whirlwind their debut ‘White Noise’ created that left the band with “no time ever to collect ourselves or just exist as humans,” PVRIS now feel replenished and rejuvenated after taking a step back. They saw family, friends and unwound. “I had a hard time adjusting, but I’m in a good place now,” explains Lynn. They haven’t returned empty handed though. As always, PVRIS have been scheming, and there’s a new album ‘All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell’ on the horizon. Created in two and a half months in a renovated church in Utica, the band spent every day making use of the grand pianos, the organs, the hundred of amps and pretty much anything you can imagine. "It was the opposite of what the recording experience for our first album was like,” explains Alex, and “that space translates in the music. Whereas ‘White Noise’ is very compressed, it’s still big, but it’s boxed in, this record breathes, and it’s open and big.”