Break The Chain

With a new EP and a new mentality, PVRIS are defying anyone who’d seek to hold them down or box them in. This is the story of some of the most transformative months of their lives, and a look at what might come next…

- Rob Sayce

Sometime after midnight on California’s Pacific Coast Highway, a pair of headlights cut through the darkness. A group of friends are travelling out from LA to Malibu Beach, their car stereo blaring as they drive a route where, unlike most places in the region, you can feel a sense of genuine isolation. Little over 30 minutes later - and still on the doorstep of a city that’s home to almost four million people, locked in a constant grind of noise, conflict and creation - an eerie quiet descends. Together with guitarist Alex Babinski and bassist Brian MacDonald, Lynn Gunn sits on a pitch-black stretch of beach: a stark, surreal landscape, suspended between looming Malibu cliffs and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Captured in time by the flash of a camera, the trio let the sand run through their fingers and look out at a sea that glimmers in the moonlight. Then, the party move on to a deserted stretch of road: a once-familiar landscape that’s rendered totally alien in the gloom. This area is one of California’s biggest tourist draws, but right now it may as well be the moon, or a set from a David Lynch movie. For PVRIS’ vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, this is something of a double memory. Most recently came the very photoshoot that you’re holding in your hands. But months before, a similar road trip had represented a breakthrough in her experiences in Los Angeles: hearing back concrete proof that her work in the city was bearing fruit. “LA has a very interesting energy,” Lynn considers. As we speak, the band are gearing up for the release of their new EP - born of a time of great change and evolution for them, both musically and otherwise.