When Pure Reason Revolution announced their return in 2019, mainstays Chloë Alper and Jon Courtney had no idea how unrecognisable life would soon become. Their latest album, Above Cirrus, explores a brave new world and finds the band revisiting their Floyd-infused past. Alper and Courtney discuss parallel universes, silencing critics and expanding their horizons.

Words: James McNair

PRR, L-R: Chloë Alper, Greg Jong, Jon Courtney.

Images: Greg Jong

“Pink Floyd did fine without Roger Waters, and when Brian Wilson stayed in the studio The Beach Boys were still out touring.”

Jon Courtney

To borrow from Sly Stone, Pure Reason Revolution’s fifth LP wants to take you higher. Above Cirrus, in fact, cirrus being the kind of cloud that forms at considerable altitude. Made during lockdown after Covid rules nixed the band’s tour for their lauded 2020 comeback Eupnea, the follow-up album hungers for escape. Alive with sinewy riffs, Floydian tics and breathtaking passages of almost choral prog, it’s also a dark meditation on the fear and personal challenges wrought by the pandemic, and other radical changes in our world.

“Making it was cathartic, certainly,” says singer-guitarist Jon Courtney. “A lot of the writing on Above Cirrus concerns relationships; how we can be loving, then rip into each other moments later. The first song I worked on was New Kind Of Evil, and at that point I really felt the virus was something more than just unfortunate. I had this strange, apocalyptic sense of ‘we’re all going to die’.”

This was back in April 2020, while Courtney was in Berlin, his adopted home of recent years. Back in Blighty, meanwhile, PRR singer and bassist Chloë Alper was also feeling antsy.