At the dawn of the 2020s, South London's PVA were off to a promising start. Their electrifying concerts won them a devoted and growing following, and with 2020's Toner, they delivered a Grammy nominated EP that inventively meshed industrial, post-punk, and electronic music. Their momentum seemed unstoppable until, thanks to the COVID-19 global pandemic, it wasn't. As a band that forged so much of their identity through their live shows, PVA had to rethink their entire creative process when lockdowns became an everyday reality. Ella Harris wrote poetry and honed her production skills; Josh Baxter produced releases for other groups; and drummer Louis Satchell studied ancient African polyrhythms. Blush reveals that the pandemic didn't halt PVA's progress -- it pivoted their energy in a different direction and made them a better band. They've refined seemingly everything about their music: they're now less interested in keeping a beat going than where it can take them, and as they slow and shift their rhythms, they leave room for surprises, like the loping beats and layered percussion on "Comfort Eating" that reflect the influence of Satchell's studies. Rooted in a grinding beat, "Bunker" moves from a paranoid churn riddled with probing synths to rave euphoria with remarkable subtlety. Though PVA came up in a scene filled with vocalists who favor largely spoken-word delivery, Harris continues to give this style more variety than many of her contemporaries. Her background as a poet informs her phrasing on songs such as "Soap," where her cadence caresses the beat as she praises her lover's "feet and your neck and your earlobes." The contrast between the roundness in her voice and the abrasive sounds surrounding her works especially well on Blush, lending complexity to "Untethered"'s icy hot union of sensuality and independence, "Hero Man"'s resolute teardown of toxic masculinity, and "Bad Dad"'s dystopian family portrait. PVA's command of so many sounds and moods also sets them apart from the crowd; they're just as convincing on the furious stomp of "The Individual" (one of two tracks featuring Baxter on lead vocals) as they are on songs like "Transit," which moves from fragile to feral while remaining deeply eerie, and "Seven," a hushed collaboration with Tony Njoku that borders on ambient with its wide-open washes and spaces. It's almost hard to believe that the band that made Toner created such delicate, sophisticated tracks just a couple of years later, but Blush is the work of a group that knows itself completely -- and the kind of fully realized yet surprising debut album that doesn't come along often. ~ Heather Phares