The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (Fortuna Pop)
4/5
By: Dan Monsell
Two or three years ago it was near impossible to step out your front door for bands referencing scratchy early 80s post-punks like Gang Of Four, Wire and Joy Division. Flash forward to present day: the inevitable cyclical progression of time rolls on. A new retrospective glance to the mid-Eighties, and the likes of Jesus and the Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen and other Postcard-era underground types are fast becoming the new folks parenting the sound of newbies on both sides of the pond.
Whereas chart-bothering Scots Glasvegas have taken some of the ideas of The 'Mary Chain and polished them up for the masses, the wonderfully named The Pains of Being Pure at Heart also use this intensely euphoric formula of big block waves of guitars and pummelling drums. But instead of blasting it from football terraces, The Pains are throwing it back down to the chequered-shirt wearing, vegan-cooking, mitten-wearing indie-pop underground.
This band's self-titled debut hits you like a warm rush up the spine, or like kissing someone you really like but also know really well. There's a sense of comfort there, but still tons of excitement too. It's a feeling similar to listening to a Wedding Present album (a band they've recently toured with) or the early sound of My Bloody Valentine when they were still very much part of the C86 pack.
Songs like 'Come Saturday', 'This Love Is Fucking Right!' and 'Hey Paul' are all particular stand-outs on an album that never veers far away from muffled sounding pop songs full of side-to-side head swinging smiley faces all round. It's a lot cooler than that sounds, and these folks are some of the fine and dandiest in Brooklyn town. It isn't some twee heart on the sleeve mess-around (though the band do embrace the increasing use of the word 'tweamo' about themsleves) - it's definitely the case that these songs have legs, and absolutely killer hooks to boot.
Bar the slightly misfiring glitzy synth pop of 'A Teenager in Love', the record's only real downfall is a quite insistent stubbornness to ever do anything different from the central idea of fantastic indie-pop songs. No huge issue when the songs are as good as these. Personal favourite 'The Tenure Itch' does manage to mix things up with a bit of an almost Simple Minds like ambiance - perhaps hinting at a direction the band could take in future. We'll admit that it's only March and we shouldn't get too carried away, but if this isn't on our top albums list come December we'd well be pretty surprised - it's a marvellous debut finding itself very hard to be removed from the office stereo.
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