PACIFIC UV, Longplay 2 (Warm Records)

[April 23rd, 2008]

[HYPNOTIC POST-ROCK] Expectations can go a long way in determining how we perceive a record. Just the cover and track list of Pacific UV’s sophomore full-length, Longplay 2, should be enough of a tip—in the land of one-word song titles and mostly white album art, orchestrated instrumental rock is king.

Yet it’s too easy to crown the Portland-via-Athens post-rockers’ new record (and first recorded at local go-to studio, Type Foundry) as pure pastiche. The band isn’t bashful of its myriad influences (Radiohead, Lamb, the Smiths, Spiritualized) when touted in interviews, but Longplay 2 not only mines rock touchstones, it does so damn well. And in the five years since the trio’s initial offering (a self-titled debut that received a glowing four-star review in Rolling Stone), its sound has grown. One big change is the influx of vocals on half of the eight tracks, from guitarist Clay Jordan and guest Carolyn Berk, who lends her breathy baritone to the slow and dreamlike “Tremolo”—a song so astute in its beauty and synth strings it sounds like a long-lost doo-wop hit (sung underwater).

Though Longplay 2 often goes down a somewhat predictable path, it harbors a few surprises as well: Soft, almost bluegrassy plucks of banjo pop up in “Something Told Us,” right before the big rock crescendo; a trip-hop beat slowly bubbles up at the end of penultimate track “If So”; and the hushed electronics that underscore “Alarmist” and “Waiting” add to the band’s almost machinelike precision, recalling Rock Action-era Mogwai more than any number of more obvious shoegaze influences.

“Ljiv,” a song with a nonsensical title and hypnotic piano-and-strings refrain, is an almost dead-ringer for one of the quieter acoustic songs on Sigur Rós’ Hvarf-Heim—and the best song on Longplay. Beginning with a repetitive line played on a closely mic-ed piano, “Ljiv” slowly adds layers of violin, ambient noise and (what I think is) some really faint glockenspiel in the background. It’s quite a stunning composition for a rock band, especially after repeated listens when you realize it’s basically a modern classical piece. It’s the type of music that should score the emotional “I just broke up with my girlfriend and it’s raining and thank God I’m looking out over the hills of L.A.” scene in the next P.T. Anderson film. It doesn’t rock per se, but then that would just be, you know, a tad derivative.