Four years in the making, Pnau's new album 'Soft Universe', is a whole album about what happens when something is taken away. Written during the sad, dark demise of a relationship, it also manages to be an explosion of turbo charged, rapturous pop music, these downcast songs about love gone wrong buoyed by a sense of festival-friendly, hands-in-the-lasers sing-along euphoria.
From the exhilarating rush of 'Unite Us' to the furious energy of 'The Truth' and the tentative optimism of 'Waiting For You' this album may have the drive, ambition and feeling of pent-up amazingness of a band's debut, but this is actually Pnau's fifth LP. Whether that news comes as a surprise or not may depend on the hemisphere you call home: in Australia Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes are the multi-platinum, multiple-award-winning duo returning after a brilliant couple of years touring the planet as side project Empire Of The Sun, for which Luke Steele joined Nick up front while Peter took on production duties.
To make things even less simple, there are also the other acts - like Teenager, the band Nick formed with Pip from Ladyhawke - and the production credits for everyone from Robbie Williams to Ellie Goulding. There's also Nick's recent position as composer and musical director of Cirque Du Soleil, a two-and-a-half years-in-the-making role which saw him reimagining the music on a $70m production that will tour the planet for five years.
While band might have fingers in many pies, it's Pnau that always pulls them back, presenting new challenges and ways of working together. For 'Soft Universe' the band embraced liminality, the mental state of being on the threshold between two different consciousnesses. Peter explains. "You go to the brink of another space. We've always felt that, when we write, it's not us making the music - we're channeling it from somewhere else. "
For Nick, combining liminality with a collapsed relationship created some powerful lyrical flashpoints. " This, in turn, leads Nick to pinpoint one of the main differences between Pnau and Empire Of The Sun. "With the Empire Of The Sun album, I was really in love when I wrote it," he says. "Empire's very much full of the hope you feel when you've just fallen in love, whereas this Pnau album is about a hope to one day achieve that hope." Listening to the album, as songs lurch from 'dealing with it' to 'not dealing with it very well at all really' then back again, "'Solid Ground' was written in the midst of things, but it's got a great positivity to it," Nick admits, "but then there's other songs like 'Epic Fail', which is in that headspace of being completely war-torn. Now I hope other people can take it away and attach things in their own life to it. I want the album to live outside of the dark rooms we made it in."
Some of those rooms were, as it turns out, not as dark as others, with recording taking place in Paris, New York, LA and mainly - because they were on tour there then decided not to go home - London. Often, the city would dictate the mood. Angry finger-pointing anthem 'The Truth' came out of LA ("they like to squeeze the blood from the stone out there"), while the first song on the album - and the first song written for the album - was inspired by London. "London wrote 'Everybody' for us," Nick says. "It has that big, voluminous blue-grey cloud over it, but in a beautiful way. Light, or the lack of light, has a very powerful impact on the way I write."
After an emotionally downward nine tracks the album ends with an optimistic lift in the shape of 'Waiting For You'. "It feels like the start of a new record," Nick says. "Normally we wait until the next album to start a new record, there's a door opening to another world,"
Nick and Peter have known each other since they bonded over Meat Beat Manifesto and Altern-8 when were both ten-year-olds growing up in Sydney; there was a shed in Nick's back yard which became their first studio after they stole an amp from their school and wired it up. The duo's first endeavours involved soundtracking Super 8 films they'd made. "We didn't know what we were doing," Nick laughs. "I didn't even know where Middle C was on the keyboard !"
In the years that followed Nick and Peter developed together as musicians. Their first album as Pnau was never properly released but their second, 2000's 'Sambanova', went on to win Dance Release Of The Year at the ARIAs. The day after it won the award, the album was pulled over sample clearance issues. Four years passed before their third album 'Again' appeared, but it was their fourth, self-titled album another four years later that blew the doors open for Pnau. The band found themselves championed Elton John. Elton's fought their corner ever since and has taken on a low-key A&R role for 'Soft Universe', their first album for Ministry Of Sound in the UK. His role, the band agree, feels more like a mentorship. "To have had Elton's support has been incredible," Nick explains, "it's about having an opportunity to exist in the world. Making music in Australia, it often feels like you don't have any connection with the rest of the world."
The moment sparked by 'Soft Universe' feels like perfect pop for 2011, and while their last album won new fans across the globe 'Soft Universe' will make their name. With this extraordinary new album ready to go and a new live show in production, Pnau's connection with the rest of the world will be stronger than ever in 2012.
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