We’re halfway through 2018 and PVRIS have spent more time on the road than off it, continuing a world tour in support of last year’s All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell release. They were even part of the massive Coachella festival, performing to – from the band’s perspective – unexpectedly massive crowds. “We had no clue what to expect – we had no idea whether anyone at Coachella would care about us,” confesses the band’s frontwoman, Lynn Gunn.
“Both weekends were absolutely amazing, though, we had such great crowds. I was really taken aback – it was a really fun experience for us all.” Unfortunately, tour commitments meant that the band couldn’t stick around long enough to see Beyonce’s now-legendary set. “We literally had to leave as soon as we were finished,” Gunn sighs. “I did get to see St. Vincent, The Weeknd and The Neighborhood, though. My mind was blown by them.”
Not long before Coachella, PVRIS were on the road with Muse, alongside fellow countrymen 30 Seconds to Mars. Indeed, PVRIS may be the only band in the Venn diagram of having toured with Muse, 30 Seconds to Mars, Circa Survive and The Amity Affliction. “It’s funny, we can transcend a lot of genres as a band, but really confuse people at the same time,” Gunn says.
“Humans naturally want to compartmentalise and label things, so no one really knows where to put us. That also means that we get sent a lot of incredible offers, and these amazing bands reach out to us. When we were starting out, Muse and 30 Seconds to Mars were two bands that we dreamed of playing shows with. The fact we got to do a tour with both at the same time was unbelievable.”
All We Know of Heaven was easily the most ambitious project the band have ever undertaken, coming together with almost two years’ worth of work going into it. Even when the final track listing was whittled down from the 45 songs written for it, the album’s finishing touches were the equivalent of doing your homework on the morning bus. “We were emailing mixes and masters back and forth while we were out on tour,” Gunn recalls. “I truly didn’t feel ready for the record to come out.
“The day it did, it felt like it had leaked or something. Even the themes of the record, the things I was writing about, it felt like I hadn’t healed properly from them. I was still in recovery. Touring in support of the record really was me processing everything as it was happening. It’s been very therapeutic – there’s been a lot of work that I’ve done on myself since the tour started.”
Also of note since the album’s release is ‘Disappear’, a single from Sydney’s Tonight Alive featuring guest vocals from Gunn. As it turns out, Gunn was also a co-writer – and the idea of making a song with them had been entertained since as early as 2015. “All of us immediately clicked on tour,” Gunn says. “Jenna [McDougall, Tonight Alive vocalist] and I had talked a lot about collaborating. We were in Nashville last year, rehearsing before the Muse tour, and Tonight Alive happened to be there at the same time writing new material. When we had a day off, I went in to hang out with them and see what they were all up to. Within that day, we’d written the song.”
This month sees PVRIS returning to Australia for a string of capital-city headline dates, rolling on their world tour and bringing their new songs Down Under for the first time since their official release. “It’s been cool to see the growth the band has had over there since we first started coming over,” Gunn says. “It’s so interesting – not just from a band perspective, but from a life perspective. It’ll be almost exactly a year between our last tour there and this one by the time we get over there, and even then we’ve already seen a change in how many people are responding and reacting. We’re so excited to come play for you all, just to see what’s going on over there.”
