Pacific UV Weekends

Pacific UV has a work ethic that’s comparable to the cresting soundscapes they employ – in three to four year intervals, they’ve resurfaced with slow-simmering, gossamer compositions that undulate, emanate, and orbit in infinite space. So they don’t write new material very often. Just as post-rock instrumentals take their dear time to unfurl, the same could be said about how often we actually need records of this same nature. And there haven’t been any sweeping statements thus far: they’ve remained serenely controlled, wiling to discard all the bells and whistles to make riveting, blissful pop that takes one to far-flung destinations.

The delirious grooves that slather all over the string-laden Friday Night Dream aptly portrays a group that still knows how to put across these enrapturing moments of translucence. But the magic hour doesn’t last long – when Funny Girl and Just 4 Kix follows with tacked on Kraut synths and juvenile confessionals tailored for the dance floor, the first thing that'll come to mind is that your mp3 is shuffling a practical joke on you. So it is true that junkies of ambient music turn to other genres when they want to branch out – in the case of pacific UV, they’ve been traversing vast landscapes for so long that the one thing they desperately seek is any form of human contact.

There’s nothing wrong with changing to a new wave-inflected sound. But Pacific UV are apparently setting themselves to please a wider audience by grouping fun, catchy singles (which there's a severe lack of) around a low-key introspective tone.  In fact, Pacific UV takes a turn for the dramatic…fast - the sterile synths and I’m high for love metaphors ravage the pompous orchestral arrangements of High, while Going Home goes for skuzzy synths to emphasize some feedback-drenched catharsis. When these are cobbled together with the robotic synth pop of Ballerina, which mimics the electronically processed vocals of Man Machine-era Kraftwerk too on the nose and makes it sound cute with its I love you and you love me verses, it really becomes a challenge to listen with a straight face.

When Pacific UV would let their instrumental dependency take over, any perceivable word would become instantly superfluous. Considering how the lyrical content and flat as a rug singing in Weekends was written for an elementary school child to understand, they probably should’ve kept it that way; it occasionally downgrades the songs to a point where they are unable to rise above their cheesiness. It begs for your attention by overtly trying to be different, trying to nitpick different songs forms to see what a focus group would approve. If there’s any form of how the old and new Pacific UV works it’s Be My Only Shallow (My Bloody Valentine reference - zing!), which cleverly converts a fuzzy, Jesus and Mary Chain riff into danceable moist pop. Otherwise, Pacific UV is one of those groups that didn't have to keep up with the times.