Live Review: PVT, Gold Class

On a windswept and very wet night we gathered upstairs at Newtown Social Club — surely one of the best intimate spaces in the inner west currently — to celebrate PVT's tenth year as a band. Ten years is a commendable period of music-making, as is the impressive feat of playing a set that never bored and was laden with consistently brilliant tunes. If anyone needed reminding, PVT have been making truly mind-melding electronic music for a while now, and it is majestic live.

Opening the night, Melbourne's Gold Class were thrumming with energy. Frontman Adam Curley's deep, charismatic vocals excel live, matched by their overall '80s British post-punk sounds. Life As A Gun had some enthusiastic audience members singing along in what was an incredibly tight set.

The feeling towards PVT in the room was best expressed in the various cries of "I love you!" throughout the night. With a ten-year discography to choose from, they began with Evolution and gave each record fair attention, with songs from 2005's Make Me Love You causing excitement, while drummer Laurence Pike emphasised the unlikelihood of these songs ever being played live again.

It's impossible to fault PVT; they seemed to function on an almost telepathic plane when it came to the perfect rhythm they kept, with the bass shaking the floor beneath us. O Soundtrack My Heart, a song the band jokingly referred to as their "Continental European hit", undoubtedly received the most rousing response, as those repetitive synths joined crashing percussion in a sonic tidal wave. They could've happily ended the set there, but it was their anniversary after all and, as they blasted out Window during their encore, there was a definitive feeling that we all could've stayed celebrating all night.