PNAU  

 The new album by the Australian duo Pnau, due out in summer 2011 and tentatively titled Soft Universe, is the finest example yet of their epic techno pop. The faster, more uptempo tracks - using their best-known songs to date, Embrace and With You Forever (the latter featuring Luke Steele of The Sleepy Jackson and Empire Of The Sun), as the template – are their most accessible and uplifting ventures yet into the territory of supercharged anthemica.

But it is far from an album of club bangers: Soft Universe is a pop record in the traditional sense, one that sees Pnau’s Peter Mayes and Nick Littlemore branching out into classic songcraft, including subtly orchestrated ballads. It bears the influence not just of Empire Of The Sun, Nick’s award-winning, commercially successful project with Luke Steele, but of Bowie and Bono and Burt Bacharach as well as Pnau’s new mentor, Elton John. It feels big, ambitious, expansive – like a musical composed by U2, arranged by Prince and Giorgio Moroder, and based on the songs of Taupin and John.

“We’ve developed into better songwriters,” says Peter Mayes, who produced EOTS’ Walking On A Dream. “Our melodies have improved, as have our production abilities. This album is more about the songs than ever before, more about the melodies and traditional song structures.”

Nick Littlemore couldn’t agree more: “This record is poppier and more structured,” he says. “We’re trying to move away from the club.” They wanted, he explains, to “create something bigger” this time, “for a bigger stage”. He adds of Pnau’s latest music and its huge commercial potential: “Sonically and musically it’s all about having our arms as outstretched as possible. Hopefully it will reach around the globe, reach to the back [of stadia].”

But it’s not all fist-pumping anthems; there are moments of quiet reflection, too, such as Waiting For You. “That song was the first time Peter and I wrote a traditional song, just sat down at the piano and sang it. It was a trip for us.” They wrote it, a breathtaking ballad, after seeing Elton John working with his recent collaborator, Leon Russell. Seeing them in action, Nick was inspired. “It was kind of like, ‘Ah, that’s what they do.’”

It was while Elton was in Australia that he discovered Pnau’s music. Nick was in the dentists’ chair when he got “the call”. “It was so surreal,” he laughs. “He told me how much he loved our records. So we went and sang to him at his hotel, had tea and chatted. He said he’d do anything to help us. He likes the future; he’s into what young people are doing.”

For Nick, Elton’s involvement has been a lifeline. “He’s been incredible at mentoring me through a period of depression,” he reveals. And Pnau have been able to return the favour, working on an album based on the songwriting legend’s massive back catalogue, on a project that will amount to a thorough re-examination of his work. It is bound to cause tremendous interest in 2011.

With Pnau signed to Rocket Music Mgmt and a deal brokered with Polydor Records for their brilliant new music, Pnau’s future couldn’t be brighter. This is just as well because their past, especially Nick’s recent past, as alluded to above, has been filled with pain. Soft Universe, for which he wrote the lyrics, has provided him with an opportunity to deal with the anguish he suffered as he broke up with his girlfriend.

“Peter and I started writing these songs as the Empire Of The Sun album hit the shops in spring 2009, and as we sat down in our house in Shepherds Bush and wrote the first track, Everybody, I knew that my relationship, which hadn’t quite ended, would dictate the theme of the album. I discovered that the best way to write songs was from a personal, emotional place, so I kept going without knowing where it would go. I tried to vocalise what I was feeling.”

Soft Universe is a sort of dance-album version of Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, an exercise in catharsis. “It’s more postcards from the edge,” decides Nick, who describes the last two years as “the lowest point, emotionally, in my life.” But as he says, “It’s been very important to take something negative and turn it into something positive. It’s been absolutely essential for my survival – if I’d taken something dark and made it darker I would have slit my wrists. This has given me the chance to do something that makes me feel good and hopefully will make other people feel good.”

No wonder Everybody and the other tracks on the album such as A Better Way, The Truth, Solid Ground and Unite Us surge with positive energy and a sense of the euphoria you get when you emerge from a period of despair. “We’ve taken a very personal experience and made it global,” explains Nick, who admits that Soft Universe makes sense as the follow-up to Walking On A Dream. “That album was a colourful thing that I wrote when I was deeply in love. This record is the logical extension. It deals with heartbreak; it’s about grief.”

Nick, who admits to being a self-taught musician lacking in virtuoso prowess, and Peter, who has been playing instruments since childhood, are the perfect team. Peter realises Nick’s lyrical vision; Nick puts flesh and blood on Peter’s musical bones. Together, they have produced an album that everyone can enjoy.

“Really, it’s a record about Nick’s experiences,” says Peter, who compares his partner’s resonant croon to that of Jim Morrison or Michael Hutchence.

Nick, who has also been busy composing music for the Cirque Du Soleil in Paris, describes Pnau’s songs as “performance art pieces structured like normal music”. Even though it’s their fourth album, Soft Universe has the urgency and immediacy of a debut.

“Every record we make feels like a brand new album from a brand new band,” says Nick. “We like to start with a clean slate. And this time the object has been to capture the human experience, and love and hate as the key experiences within that. Now we want to take those emotions and translate them to crowds of 20,000 – or 20 million.”