THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART: BELONG
[rating: 4]
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart: Belong
Label: Collective Sounds
Release date: March 29, 2011
Since forming in early 2007, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart have become one of the most buzzed about indie pop bands in years. Their distinctive retro sounding brand of noise pop is a tidy distillation of all the great late 80s/early 90s shoegaze precedents – with obvious nods to early My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Pale Saints, Rocketship – but with that incredible exuberance and energy that the Pains bring to every song. The kind of song energy that leaves me wondering whether the band is knowingly as naive as they project or incredibly emotionally complex songwriters.
On their new album Belong, the band uses their bookish lyrics and fuzzed out shoegaze sound to once again conquer the fine art of innocent romanticism mixed with semi-violent instrumentation, of emotional turmoil equaled by shimmering pop.
Read a more in depth album review from Discosalt contributing writer Andrew Bailey below:
Belong paints The Pains of Being Pure at Heart in the same complimentary light as those successful releases of two years ago. The overall sound is largely the same as well. The New York foursome is still heavily indebted to — and derivative of, to be perfectly honest — many of shoegaze’s greatest acts. All those comparisons to My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and modern descendants like Crocodiles and The Radio Dept. that were so prevalent around their previous releases still hold true here. But this new album reflects some growth as well. It only takes one listen to the opening track, “Belong”, to gather that these songs are a little bit heavier than their predecessors. The band utilizes more aggressive guitar riffs that seem influenced by the whole 90′s grunge movement almost across the board on Belong, emphasized on that title track as well as “Girl of 1,000 Dreams” later on. They’ve also adapted a new crystalline production, unhinging themselves from some of shoegaze’s gravelly traits, which allows their spin on the genre to feel just a little more fresh and individualistic. It also provides for some nice boundaries between albums, with the self-titled and Belong managing to feel very different despite subscribing to many of the same techniques.
Even if Kip Berman’s songwriting feels a little too soft here and there (“I wonder what it’s like to be liked”, he ponders on the otherwise wonderful “Even in Dreams”), these 10 songs are almost resoundingly sensational. That said, they’re also all very similar. The debut album actually seemed that way as well, but after repeated listens tracks like “Contender”, “This Love is Fucking Right”, and “Everything With You” — among others — really began to carve out their own unique identity. Its too early to tell whether or not Belong will develop in the same manner or not, but for now it is a little difficult to pick out the LP’s premier tracks. That’s one of life’s rare win-win dilemmas though: one or two songs might not jump out from the others, but that’s only because they all triumph equally. (Read More HERE)
