pacificUV – Weekends Review

pacificUV has a new record out called Weekends.  Official release date was January 31, 2012 and you can stream/buy it here.

Beyond this album I do not know much about the band.  I know they have a few records in the mix and know they’ve been met with some critical acclaim.  Past records have held steadfast to more ethereal, ambient leanings and this is their first push into true pop sensation.
From their website I know things such as:

Clay Jordan and Howard Hudson formed pacificUV in the late 1990s in Athens, Georgia. One of them wanted the band to sound like a psychedelic Jesus and Mary Chain tripping on Nyquil, while the other wanted to play one chord for 45 minutes to determine its color. Somehow, what emerged from these disparate goals was their self-titled debut album that Rolling Stone called a “masterpiece”. The perfect mixture of noise and melody, the first L.P. was a sprawling ambient landscape that revealed a myriad of influences, from shoegaze to 60’s rock, to slow core to post-rock.

I have a particular affinity to Athens, Georgia via a friend and frequent collaborator.  I have never been there, but know of its myth.  Portland (base of operations now) has something of the same stock though typically produces a decidedly different brand than what is culled from the Georgian land.  Weekends has a bit of both combing its edges.

Recorded over the course of two years in Portland, Oregon and Athens, Georgia, Weekends details the disintegration of a relationship and represents a departure from the sprawling, dense soundscapes of the past, to include a new found pop sensibility that references the electronic musings of bands such as Kraftwerk and Magnetic Fields, while still maintaining the ambient leanings and ethereal textures that have become pacificUV’s trademark.

This is an album for the broken hearted.  It’s music for those who’ve felt its sting and silently (or at times not so silently) live with it day to day.  People whose time can be quite exhausting (and weekends especially shrill) in search of somewhere to go and something to do.

I like this album a lot.  Not because I am broken hearted and I by no means wish to assert that you must be to appreciate what is going on here, but I have been in the past and can identify its presence, beyond lyricism, in the tracks.  As the band references, you can definitely hear Kraftwerk as well as The Magnetic Fields in the constructions, but I also hear certain elements of Air and the Eels.  This particular pop sensibility allows the love and loss to be uplifting and enjoyable without distilling the narrative into simplicity.

Balancing them out are ambient stills for digestion.  They help the words seep in and feed the nostalgia that must arise in order to look upon the broken with a semblance of admiration.  The album starts with heart break and ends with heart break.  But, throughout is the process that allows one to look at the situations differently and no longer be wrapped in anger and sadness.

It’s about accepting the unacceptable; the contradictions of life that we wish to disbelieve in the middle of it.  Discussions mainly around the love and loss that can form between individuals are elevated to push us beyond the limitations of truth.  To go on they must transcend their place becoming myth.

PacificUV - Weekends Review
Rating
I don’t really know if what pacificUV is doing should be considered ground breaking or new and there are many out there who may find it utterly dull or misconstrued. But, I assure you there is a lot to find buried in layers of pop electrics.

For more info on the band check out their website.