Review: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s “The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart”

  High quality alternative rock comes and goes in cycles.  Often when you aren’t expecting anything great to catch your attention, something will.  These days, this usually occurs when a new generation picks up an older sound and tries to reinvent it and make it new again.  The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are no exception.  This New York band has crafted an exceedingly strong debut album combining the shoegazer fuzz of bands like Ride with a faint touch of appealing dream pop.  They’ve even added a nice helping of experimental feedback to bring to mind New York experimental rock gods, Sonic Youth.  Imagine if the Mojave 3 were much harder-edged and covered in fifteen layers of fuzz and you’ve got the idea.  All together, their sound is a catchy, infectious, ear-bleeding, tinny helping of power-pop-driven fun.  This album sounds like it came out of England in the late eighties.  For fans who came of age at that time, this record should be a warm reminder of the great possibilities encountered when loud guitars collide with strong melodies.  It’s a sound radio has never quite fully embraced but should.  The alt-rock stations should be playing less Godsmack and Disturbed and more records like this. This record’s production is straight ahead with few fancy flourishes.  It’s a record without frills and gimmicky synthetics.    As if signed up at a local coffeehouse at open-mic night, the band members have strangely opted to go on a first name basis in the liner notes.  Alex plays bass, Kip plays guitar and sings, Kurt is the drummer and Peggy plays keyboards and sings.  The puzzling lack of last names can be seen in many ways.  On the positive side, it can be said that perhaps the band members aren’t out for true fame and instead want to remain somewhat anonymous, letting the music speak for itself.  Negatively, it could be said that this move is pretentious, as if to say “We’re too cool for last names.”  (Only the most jaded music fan would think this.)  More outlandish assumptions would be that this is their radical way of combating I.D. theft or they are on the run from the fuzz.  (I’m kidding, of course.)  If this were the case, however, it wouldn’t make much sense, since their pictures are inside the album. (Ah, foiled again!!!)  The album opens with a sustained note of harmonic feedback.  Right away, when “Contender” begins, you know this is not your typical pop record.  A quickly strummed, somewhat folky guitar riff begins, still covered by the feedback’s dissonance.  It creates a densely layered, big sound.  Shoegaze as a subgenre is usually somewhat dark.  Musically, this is bright, despite the refrain of “You never were a contender.” “Come Saturday” is faster.  Kurt’s drumming is rather rapid and precise.  Fuzzy layers come and go and the appealing melody is punctuated by some “oooh oooh oohh” style vocals bookending the chorus.  This rocks hard, but it’s not threatening in the least.  It’s the kind of happy song you can simply let wash over you. It’s meant to be turned up and played while cranked up to eleven.  There’s no way you won’t be smiling after hearing this.  “Young Adult Friction” is the current single.  It’s an ode to making out and getting busy in the school library.  Never has a song mentioning “microfiche” and “the moldy page” sounded so romantic and alluring.  You can feel the raging hormones in the song.  One involved party decides that they will both go on their way and “never speak of it again,” declaring “Don’t check me out.”  (You’ve got to love those library puns!)  The other is left high and dry. This is literally a highly literate depiction of teenage lust and heartbreak.  It has lasting appeal because we have all been that age.  All of us on some level can relate to that first time when we thought we had something as intangible and elusive as love only to be relentlessly let down.  When you are young and heartbroken, you know you are truly alive and this song is a bright, booming reminder of that feeling.  At that age, however, you don’t know really what true love is, even if you think you do, so such letdowns make you stronger until you later discover the real thing.  Thusly, when real love does come around, it’s that much more unexpected and sweet.  The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart take us from the world of teenage lust to the uncomfortable world of brother and sister love in “This Love Is F___ing Right!” (“In a dark room we can do what we like. / You’re my sister and this love is f___ing right!”)  It doesn’t sound so right to me!  It doesn’t sound right at all, lyrically! (NO! NO! NO!)  Luckily, those lyrics are buried deep within the mix.  Casual listeners will not be offended or maybe even understand the lyrics.  Instead they may very well be bobbing their heads to the infectious melody.  I’d frankly prefer to think that these two characters are “brother” and “sister” in the larger, human sense, rather than blood relatives.  It’s a lot less disturbing that way. “The Tenure Itch” in its title alone brings back to mind the scholarly and pun-tastic vibe in “Young Adult Friction.” The song still has a propulsive beat but the guitars are scaled back to make room for Peggy’s more prominent organ playing.  This would make another great single with its chorus of “Every night it comes and goes again.”  It’s one of the clearest sounding cuts on the record.  Even though it’s straight ahead in its pop approach, it doesn’t seem obvious.  That’s a skill.  When you can take known musical conventions and make them your own, that’s when you are truly on to something. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart fully understand this and walk this line with ease.  This makes them true artists.  “Stay Alive” also initially has its guitar levels turned way down.  This time, Peggy adds some very eighties-style synths into the mix.  At the chorus, the guitar wash enters and fills out the track’s dynamic.  Ultimately the cut brings to mind the late-period work of the Psychedelic Furs.  (I’m thinking of the Furs’ classic, “Until She Comes.”  A great sound to have, indeed!!)  This is the kind of song one might have listened to, wide-eyed, up in one’s bedroom, pondering the future.  There’s a built-in romanticism here. “Everything With You” brings back the continuous layering of guitars.  It’s yet another appealingly sweet song about young love. (It also was the album’s first single.)  In typical fashion, there as always is a slightly bothersome edge as the song makes reference to a “strange teenager, waiting for death at 19.”  As morbid as that might be, you have to remember that as a teenager you simultaneously feel both immortal and like everything is a dire matter of life and death. It causes confusion, for sure, but so does everything at that time.  Such a macabre reference is typical. Perhaps also, it is not meant to be taken literally.  Perhaps in delivering these lyrics, Kip is saying that when you become an adult and exit your teen years, part of you dies inside.  The pressures of adulthood do undoubtedly attempt to kill one’s spirit, but the overall goal is to not let that happen. This album is all about maintaining one’s youthful exuberance.  Perhaps the guitar fuzz is metaphorically there as a symbol for all the static we encounter, keeping us from simply enjoying our human existence.      The chorus of this song says it perfectly. “I’m with you and there’s nothing left to do.”  The secret of life is enjoying each other’s company and connecting to one another.  Once we find those who inspire us to be the best we possibly can be, we’re set. This is true even if we end up sitting around, bored out of our minds together.  “A Teenager In Love” has a lighter, more airy sound.  It’s got a nice bounce, recalling everyone from the Smiths to the Go-Betweens. If I’m reading this right, it’s about a teenage girl who is either dead or out of it.  Thinking of the sentiments discussed in the last track, such death may be spiritual in nature. The track sounds innocent until you listen to the words, “You don’t need a friend when you’re a teenager in love with Christ and heroin.”  Is the band making a point by comparing intense religious fervor to drug abuse?  It’s hard to tell, but the track paints a picture of a reclusive outsider living on the fringes.  (It’s not a pretty picture.)   Once again, the lyrics are buried in the mix so casual listeners might not notice enough to be offended, especially since the song does have a happy, upbeat sonic energy.  “Hey Paul” is a rapid-fire, two-minute fiery burst of adrenaline.  Paul is upset and disillusioned with his life, just like just about every character on this album.  He’s just “waiting for someone….waiting for a moment when everything’s alright.”  This album is about intense longing for some sort of connection with the world, but alienation will only be helped if you have company, so the chorus goes, “Hey Paul, where have you gone?  I wanna come along.”  This essentially says, “Hey, do you feel alienated?  Can I be your friend and be alienated with you?”  It’s really contradictory when you think about it.  You can’t really truly be alienated with someone else.  As stated before, however, this continues the confusing thread of the teenage state of mind.  It’s an angst-driven time when all you want is direction.  The album ends with “Gentle Sons, which is probably the fuzziest cut on the record.  The slow, initial beat brings to mind “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain, until it doubles in time.  Eventually, the lyrics get totally enveloped by buzzing feedback and wash.  By the end, the guitars sound like an airplane motor.  All along, the clear sense of melody remains intact.  The album ends in another sustained note, not dissimilar from where the album began.  This is one of the strongest debut albums in recent memory.  It’s a classic waiting to happen and just what indie-rock fans need at this point.   It may not be the most original album, but it doesn’t have to be, as long as it’s good.  This album is actually beyond good.  It’s profoundly great.  It’s a thirty-five minute reminder of experiences of youth.  It’s an album, perfectly encapsulating all the turmoil and angst of that time.  This record should appeal to the angry, confused teenager in all of us.