The Pains of Being Pure at Playing Authentic Indie Pop

Brooklyn's The Pains of Being Pure at Heart has a stupid band name. It's a sentence turned into a very large noun, it's incredibly long (does it even fit on the marquee?), and it’s a name that could be easily be confused for a band that belongs in the mall. I could have idiotically bypassed The Pains by judging a book by its cover. Fortunately my first experience was confusing their music for being The Field Mice when being played over the speakers at work. It didn't hurt that they were signed in the frenzy of AAA Brooklyn bands that Slumberland had recently signed.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is not a mid-90’s emo band. This quartet is positively indie pop. Nodding in the direction of Abba on "A Teenager in Love,” scales that could have been lifted out of Harvey Williams’ song book, and continuous My Bloody Valentine & Belle and Sebastian comparisons. Is there another concoction that could possibly make up a better modern day Sarah Records throw back band? If anybody is curious about the MBV comparisons, this is probably due to boy/girl vocal melodies, and the fact that all of The Pains’ songs are buried beneath a Big Gulp’s worth of reverb. The B&S banter probably comes from the Stuart Murdoch-esque lyrics, "At the back of a crowded scene/you saw the boys in white sing/'I'm a pretender'/but you never were a contender," Kip sings on the track “The Contender.” I would never argue or disagree with the MBV and B&S comparisons, but I will argue that the Pains' fit far closer to the Field Mice than the aforementioned bands. The proof is in the awkwardly written track titled (migrated over from a previous self-titled EP) "This Love is Fucking Right." It’s not the simple lyrics about an awkward love life that make it such an easy approximation to the Field Mice; it’s the jangly production that sounds way too close to some of songs that the Field Mice wrote on Skywriting. Whether this is intentional (they do not list them as an influence anywhere), it works to their advantage. No other band has ever come as close to approximating The Field Mice’s sound than The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

I know. I am a fool. I should never have some bologna preconception about music based off of a band name, which is why I am writing this. I hope that others have not made the same mistake that I have. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s music is approximating the Sarah Records sound probably better than any other US band today.

Go to the Slumberland website and pick up the "Everything With You" EP, or wait for the release of their their debut LP in February.
Preview tracks over at their Myspace.

Tour dates:


2/7 - New York City – Mercury Lounge*
2/8 - Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie*
2/9 - Washington, DC – Black Cat Backstage*
2/10 - Pittsburgh, PA - Garfield Artworks*
2/11 - Chicago, IL – Schubas*
2/12 - Toronto, ON – Neutral*
2/13 - Montreal, CA — Il Motore*
2/14 - Winooski, VT — The Monkey House*
2/15 – Boston, MA – Middle East*

3/13 - Brooklyn, NY - Bell House
3/14 - Baltimore, MD - Talking Head Club
3/15 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506
3/16 - Atlanta, GA - Earl
3/18 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Red 7 (Terrorbird/Force Field Party)

* with The Depreciation Guild

PDX New Year's Eve 1988...2008

If anybody is confused as to what one should do in PDX on New Year's Eve, I would suggest checking out Rotture's oddly booked New Year's Eve party. More like a fit for a New Year's Eve show in 1988, one can conclude 2008 watching/awkwardly grooving to Atole's neo-disco, Reverse Dotty's summer camp post-punk, and Seattle's Truckasaurus' bitpop at Rotture on Wednesday night. This is placing a safe bet on fun, considering Wu-Tang Clan aren't playing this year.

I believe describing a band as lo-fi, in the terms of lo-fi being a genre, is an incredible cop out. More times than not, that hyphenated word is followed by the words "Guided By Voices," which would have been a mild fit between nearly every release that the Woodsist/Fuck it Tapes (Crystal Stilts, Wavves, Vivian Girls) people have released. Jeremy Earl's (Meneguar, Shepards) Woods’ project uses low-fidelity like “Bee Thousand,” but that’s because the cassette, "Some Shame," could have been recorded inside of the woods.

Woods’ tour only tape, "Some Shame," is like hanging out with a schizophrenic music nerd. Every song on the tape carries like some fucked up B-side that Woods had found in the studios that Galaxy 500 and Neil Young recorded in. "Some Shame" has Young littered over nearly every tape hiss. While the first two tracks, "To Short" and "The Hold," sound like missing tracks off of Galaxy 500's “Tugboat EP,” specifically speaking of "To Short," which has the rhythm section filling in perfect for Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, and a croon that could have been borrowed by Dean Wareham himself. Before one can consider this as good effort at making an attempt at a decent Galaxy 500 rip-off, Woods changes gear into what sounds like a song that could have been directly picked up from Justin Vernon's (Bon Iver) log cabin with the folk track "Down This Road." Adding to the schizophrenia is "Gypsy Hand," which mixes jangle pop with psych garage rock. Before closing the tape with 18 minutes of schizophrenia, Woods deliver a mildly pleasing cover of Graham Nash’s “Military Madness,” which is full of tape hiss.

It's not a lo-fi rock album, it's simply a schizophrenic folk record recorded on a 4-track. It's a shame that Woods' are shrouded in as much obscurity as their songs are in tape hiss. If you are able to track this cassette down, it's well worth the money. It may be derivative, but giving obvious nods to seminal artists works to Woods' advantage. One would be a fool to consider it a bad move to bite off of Neil Young. If one isn't able to track the cassette down, the similarly titled "Songs of Shame" is slated to come in the spring of 2009. Time Lag recently repressed the "Family Creeps" LP as well.


Track listing:
01. To Clean
02. The Hold
03. Down This Road
04. Rain On
05. Gypsy Hand
06. Where And What Are You
07. Born To Lose
08. World
09. Military Madness
10. (Untitled

Woods Myspace

Yeah, so you are going to make pop music for the guy wearing the 2,000 dollar cardigan, C'mon:

With a label named after a breed of man’s best friend, Labrador Recordings is the perfect name for a record label that brings embarrassingly perfect pop music. Due to the lack of worldwide distribution, Labrador's impressive roster (Radio Dept., Pelle Carlberge, Club 8) is exclusive to pop aficionados.

Exposure or not, Labrador continues to deliver by releasing two fantastic new EP's in a single month’s worth of time. First up is a new one by the old dogs (pun intended), the Legends. Kicking jangle pop aside for distortion on even more distortion, Johan Angergård appears to be taking his band The Legends in a direction that would make the Mary Chain proud. The new single titled "Seconds Away" is giving obvious nods to the Jesus and Mary Chain. Seconds Away takes all of the things that made Never Understanding work so well. This is probably your digs if you are into: squelching feedback, saturated tambourine, and a Peter Hook bass line. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite EP's of the year.

According to a blog posted on the Legends Myspace, Seconds Away is about Angergård's finding of the wonders of Tryptizol. Anti-depressants? Jesus and Mary Chain? I believe this is a formula to potentially be one 2009's finest.

Following an obvious format, which is to say that the format is pop perfection, Labrador signs another new puppy (that’s the last one, I promise), Pallers. The Pallers debut 12'', titled “Humdrum,” is taking clear cues from fellow countrymen the Radio Dept. and The Knife. This duo of Swedes is delivering dark electropop that would fit perfectly between Unknown Pleasures and Movement. Slide this one between your Bizarre Love Triangle twelve-inch and copy of Silent Shout.


Labrador now has digital distribution through Iris, so you can sink your teeth into the rest of Labrador's blissful catalog.

Check it,


The Legends - Seconds away

The Legends - Over And Over

Pallers - Humdrum