Buzzin Music Blog

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (album review)

In October 1984 The Jesus & Mary Chain released their debut single, Upside Down, on Creation Records.  The layers of feedback and distorted treble jangling guitar pop noise enveloped a sixties pop melody that left me stunned when I first heard it played on The John Peel Show.

Indie pop music was about to change its tune from the polished over produced sound of The Smiths and Lloyd Cole & The Commotions to the garage pop of The Pastels, Primal Scream, The Shop Assistants, Soup Dragons and thousands of lo-fi, DIY 7″ singles releases.

To commemorate this new wave of jangle pop the NME released the now legendary C86 cassette including tracks from the aforementioned, The Mighty Lemon Drops, We’ve Gotta Fuzzbox & We’re Gonna Use It, the wonderful Close Lobsters and the very youthful Wedding Present among others.

In December 2008 a young four-piece band from New York named The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart supported The Wedding Present on a UK tour and loved every minute of it, suggesting friends back home were very jealous.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart release their eponymous debut album on 9th February 2009.

The album opens with feedback and treble jangling guitars, a reverb drenched, honey-dripping vocal and lasts for two and a half minutes.  Contender is a beautiful mirror image of the sound of Creation Records and C86. Come Saturday is a speedier track reminiscent to 1980s indie pop bands like The Shop Assistants and Talulah Gosh.

Other influences can be heard on all 10 tracks, including The Smiths on Teenager In Love, The Shop Assistants in Hey Paul, and Jesus & Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey on the final track Gentle Sons.

As I listen again and again I hear The Vaselines, The Pooh Sticks, The Sea Urchins and the brave sound of Young Scotland and Postcard Records.

But all these comparisons appear to be okay.  The band openly admit thier influences and were excited to meet with members of 1980’s indie pop bands The Rosehips & The Flatmates at one of their recent UK gigs.

This is going to take any forty-something indie pop head on a trip down memory lane; and open plenty of doors for young pop pickers who hear this kind of music for the first time.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart is a truly wonderful uplifting album full of eighties indie pop references in the same overt and unashamed way that 1980’s indie pop bands referenced the 1960’s jangle pop of The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Joe Meek and Phil Spector.

Yes I know it’s only February but I think this is going to be one of my favourite albums of 2009.

The only downside I see, is if this is the start of a 1980s C86 indie pop revival that will have fat middle-aged indie pop bands reforming and embarrassing themselves.  That is apart from the ones that are still gigging!