The background: “Pavo” is Latin for peacock, and the group’s name is inspired by a southern constellation of the same name. In Spanish, “Comer pavo” means to be a wallflower, which applies well to this Brooklyn quintet’s retro, modern sci-fi pop: they’re geeky – wilfully so – and these five classically trained musicians have played with the likes of John Zorn. The recording studio is their habitat, where they wallow, pale and withdrawn, submerged up to their moustaches and fringes in vintage gadgetry, making pop music that makes them sound like Brian Wilson running amok in the BBC radiophonic workshop. Hill hails from Pleasantville, a village in Westchester county, New York, that reeks of a Norman Rockwell painting reframed by David Lynch. Bagg’s words and music have an eerie washed-out playfulness, a wistful exuberance, that captures the sadness of a passing moment or era.
“That’s definitely in there,” agrees Hill, referring to the atmosphere of Pavo Pavo’s excellent debut album, Young Narrator in the Breakers. “It comes from the autumnal nature of our time, leaving college in New Haven and moving to New York City. A big part of that is a mourning or grief, a loss. A lot of the songs started on a piano, played late at night at one of our parents’ houses, so there’s the introspective aspect. Then we turned up the volume and created pop or rock songs. But there’s a wistfulness at the core of the songwriting.”
The lineup: Eliza Bagg (violin, synthesizers, vocals), Oliver Hill (guitars, synthesizers, vocals), Nolan Green (guitars, vocals), Austin Vaughn (drums), Ian Romer (bass).
The Fat Angel Sings 