The Pains of Being Pure at Heart at Congress on Wednesday

Brooklyn's The Pains of Being Pure At Heart will play Tucson next week, touring in support of the band's second album, Belong. I interviewed the band a couple years ago, after their self-titled debut had burned up the blog scene and was about to land on hosts of year-end best-of lists. What struck me most was both how surprised they were at the success and how little it fazed them. It was all about the music.

Belong has different roots, to be sure. Famed producer Flood is on hand, for one, and there's no way for the band to recapture the element of surprise that boosted the debut so well. Still, it's a fine album and it'll be great to see the Pains again. Here's my review from the Tucson Weekly:

Imagine if angst hadn't blanketed the alternative music of the late 1980s and 1990s—and a bright earnestness had been the core impulse instead.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart exist at the heart of that alternate reality, playing music that's polite and joyful, all the while employing the wall of distortion that served their shoegaze influences so well.

Belong, the band's second album, combines ambition and consistency, bringing back the fuzzy guitars, driving beats and sugar-sweet boy-girl harmonies of guitarist Kip Berman and keyboardist Peggy Wang. But throughout the record are flourishes and stabs at new directions, from the Smashing Pumpkins-esque bombast of "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now" to the quiet-loud sonics of the Pixies on "Belong."

While typically a strength, the band's earnestness can be blamed for the album's sleepy middle and some clunks in the lyrics. But lines like, "Even in dreams, I will not betray you," and, "When everyone was doing drugs, we were just doing love," are entirely in line with the band's name.

Anyone who heard the Pains' debut and passed will do the same. But although the band remains committed to the same aesthetic that won them fans in the first place, there are plenty of sonic upgrades on Belong. It's catchy pop music built from starry-eyed romanticism.

Published April 7, 2011 in the Tucson Weekly.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Belong by Slumberland Records

Opening the show is LA psychedelic rockers Warpaint. Check out Undertow, from The Fool, the band's Rough Trade debut.