Massachusetts trio PVRIS is coming to the Fillmore.
After releasing its debut record “White Noise” in late 2014, the electro-rock trio PVRIS toured the world for three years (including 156 shows in 2015 alone), found itself on the Billboard Alternative charts, built a sizeble audience and raised expectations for a follow-up album.
But not everything was well.
“It really messed with me, to be honest,” admits lead singer Lynn Gunn. “I felt super alone and didn’t know how to deal with anything, and suppressed a lot, compartmentalized a lot of things and ultimately built up a lot of negative energy in myself.”
Gunn finds herself in, as she puts it, “a really good place” as PVRIS (pronounced “Paris”) continues its North American tour with a stop scheduled for Friday, March 9, at the Fillmore in San Francisco. But the journey she took to get there is an object lesson in how mental health intersects with the music business, even for those who appear, from industry metrics, to be successful.
After running at full speed for three years, Gunn and her bandmates had to adjust to both the slower pace of being in the studio and the reflection that brings. For the singer, that meant dealing with some repressed feelings from the road including fear, isolation and depression.
That energy poured into one of the first songs tackled during the recording sessions for “All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell.” Musically, the song “What’s Wrong” sounds in line with the band’s first album: propulsive electrorock with beats big enough for the dance floor and a nod toward the darkness of a new wave band like Depeche Mode. But the lyrics are the sound of a songwriter coming apart at the seams, racked with indecision (“I’m the one I fear the most”) and sick of the sight of herself in the mirror (“Don’t want to see another damn inch of my skull”).
“It was the initial purging when we first got to the studio,” she says of the song. “I think it helped a bit … I feel like writing anything, whether it’s in a journal or in a song, the second you say something out loud and put it on paper or in the computer, it takes that energy out a little bit, even if it’s just the slightest (amount).”
As the album was being finished and the first tour dates came and went, though, Gunn found out — in dramatic fashion — that she had more selfwork to do.
“I completely lost my voice, pretty much,” she says. “It was honestly all mental, all anxiety. That’s what made it tricky. Anyone who deals with any type of mental issue knows that it can manifest physically. And that was the case with this; it was like someone choking me anytime I’d go to sing.”
So, how does a singer on the road work through issues like these? It’s a combination of techniques, big and small. Her schedule now allows for more down time, even if it’s just a few minutes alone. She makes sure to get outside when possible, going for runs. Even something like listing out things for which she is grateful helps — even if at first, she says, she thought it was “complete bull—.”
“I had (to) really dive deep, do a lot of analyzing and picking apart very quickly,” she says. “You’ve got to really work on it, really dive down and think about the little things that you appreciate, and those little things add up to big things, and then the big things, you eventually feel gratitude towards as well.”
Now, half a year removed from the album’s release, Gunn has found herself and her voice, and returned some balance to the hectic lifestyle of a band on the road.
“In the last six months I think I’ve really grown a lot, not just as a singer but as a human being, with a perspective change and mental shift,” she says. “If I didn’t lose my voice and hadn’t had to work through that, I don’t think I’d feel the way I do now. I’m in a really good place.”