Live Review: PVT

As well as PVT, National Gallery of Victoria also hosts Hockney's Current exhibition and Viktor & Rolf's haute couture collection. Tonight, they both serve as a unique backdrop for PVT's performance. Bringing together the different mediums of expression, all seem to share a common theme in exploring the gritty and the real.

PVT — which comprises brothers Laurence and Richard Pike, and Dave Miller — have returned to home soil at last and they start the night off by smashing through the air of propriety in National Gallery of Victoria's Great Hall with its immaculate stained-glass ceiling. A Feeling You Can Find begins and slowly builds from a smooth synth beat to a skin-crawlingly intense melody that draws the crowd into the universe created by the mesmeric quality of PVT's experimental rock. The stage is illuminated by replicas of David Hockney's art work and this trio's emotive, raw new music blends into the artist's naturistic and vivid depiction of native plants.

The trio's somewhat psytrance sound has developed into a futuristic blend of synthesised bass and deep tribal percussion. Every song appears to end in the perfect crescendo, building and growing — the crowd all reaching a similar high — and then, in one smooth drop, it ends and a roar of applause fills the room. The serene grooves get the crowd swaying together; PVT have this awe-inspiring ability to get a crowd to move as one, bopping and rocking in perfect harmony. The band move in this same rhythm on stage, too, as if possessed by the music; every beat and movement so defined and in sync.

Cold Romance breaks through the dead air with a deep, guttural bass beat and aptly showcases Richard Pike's haunting vocals; the key change lifts the crowd into a state where jagged and enthusiastic dance moves cause wine to slosh about in glasses, but no one seems to mind. Of New Spirit, Pike says, "It's our most Australian record, and it's our most futuristic record," and this rings true in the stunning production on PVT's latest long-player, which is headed by Miller and reflected by the astounding cohesion of this band.

The show comes to close and, for the first time, Pike breaks through the audience-wide trance with a quick "thank you" before the trio leave us with one final ode to the technologically advanced era. However, it still takes a few minutes for the haze to fall away and reality to return.