The last track on Pavo Pavo's debut album, Young Narrator in the Breakers, is called “2020, We'll Have Nothing Going On,” which seems strikingly ominous now given the state of current American politics. However, the Brooklyn-based five-piece consider themselves optimists—a fact mirrored in their music and their aesthetic. The album's artwork features two women holding hands, walking into a metallic horizon like a 1950s advertisement, and this type of imagery informs the album. Young Narrator in the Breakers sounds like a ’70s soft-rock dispatch from what people in the mid-20th century thought the future would be like: jetpacks, Mars landings, and dehydrated Thanksgiving dinners. Their music embraces space-age retro-futurism, but with some gentle touches from the last 10 years of indie rock (Fleet Foxes' angelic harmonies; Grizzly Bear's urban folk; Arcade Fire's wide-eyed chamber pop) to keep them from being stuck in nostalgic pastiche.
All five members of Pavo Pavo are classically trained musicians as well as songwriters—and instead of seeming like disparate entities all vying for your attention, each person contributes just enough in their respective area that every drum fill, handclap and keyboard stab falls perfectly into place. “Time is a hole in my waterbed,” sings vocalist/keyboardist Eliza Bagg in her soothing soprano on the album opener “Ran Ran Run,” exactly the sort of softly loopy line that gives Pavo Pavo their off-beat color. As the chorus kicks in, the song shifts gears from downtempo to upbeat, jaunty pop, illustrating the band's knack for unconventional arrangements, another factor that keeps their somewhat typical setup from falling into conventionality.
It seems that 2016 had brought on a miniature, unexpected ’70s soft-rock revival (think the Lemon Twigs' mellow glam or Drugdealer's woozy folk). Down to their soft focus press photos in color-coordinated turtlenecks, this is a style Pavo Pavo make no qualms about embracing, and “Wiserway,” another highlight, is the closest they get to realizing it. Supported by off-kilter synthesizers that plod along like the theme to a forgotten after-school special, vocalist/guitarist Oliver Hill's voice, somewhere between a confession and plea, coasts effortlessly across his bandmates' three-part harmonies. Pavo Pavo may have formed in Brooklyn, but everything about this song conjures up images of Laurel Canyon, midnight beach bonfires and lazy coastal car rides.
The album is not without the occasional misstep: The title track interlude is a one-minute-long burst of space rock that aches to be given a full song treatment. But more often than not, Pavo Pavo redress those imperfections within a matter of seconds—“No Mind,” an uptempo number that at times sounds like Mark Mothersbaugh fronting the Flaming Lips, glues the second half of the album together, and “John (a Little Time)” makes the best use of Bagg's haunting vocals in a whisper of a ballad, like a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy. By the time you do finally reach the closing sigh of “2020, We'll Have Nothing Going On,” the song's driving, mid-era Beach Boys wish to “Take me to the country/Seriously, Christine” does begin to feel like a promise of a better tomorrow, building a rocket to the future with childlike wonder. Whatever the actual year 2020 will hold, for now, Pavo Pavo's escapism feels cozy, uplifting, and wholly appropriate.
