 | The Pains of Being Pure at Heart |
Had heard a fair amount of buzz around these guys and managed to check them out at SXSW and I was fairly blown away by their live show. They had a great loud energetic sound to flesh out great, hook-y songs and the whole thing just exploded off the stage. I have to admit I really have only listened to the album after having seen them live. I think the live show is still where they really shine but the album is a great basis for all of that.
They really have a wall of sound kind of thing going and the sound is basically some kind of a combination of Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine and possibly the Smiths or something as well. Anyway, it is all distortion, very upbeat but also very poppy and hook-y as well. The live show has a raw energy and edge to it that unfortunately is not really as much there on the album, but for me that doesn’t really take away from the album but rather makes it its own animal sort of.
You have just killer uptempo rock out tracks like “Come Saturday” and “Everything With You” and also some more synth-y songs like “Young Adult Friction”. They also bring some acoustic/synth poppiness a la The Cure or something like that on “Stay Alive” to intro which then leads into more wall of sound chorus action.
Anyway, they pretty much are a mashup of all of those great shimmering distortion wall of sound bands from the 80s and 90s that had both big sounds and killer hooks. They pretty much combine all those elements extremely well into a great throwback kind of a record. But I will definitely say that their live show is where they really bring it though, so they take these seemingly sweet songs and really rock them out to a whole new level, so if you have a chance to check the live show, I really recommend it. There are also a few killer songs from the debut EP that unfortunately don’t make an appearance here but kill it in the live show. Really good album, but make sure and see them live.
