The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2011/02/The-Pains-Of-Being-Pure-At-Heart-Belong.jpg

http://www.thepainsofbeingpureatheart.com/

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong LP (Slumberland Records – 3.29.11)

1. Belong
2. Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now
3. Heart in Your Heartbreak
4. The Body
5. Anne With an E
6. Even in Dreams
7. My Terrible Friend
8. Girl of 1,000 Dreams
9. Too Tough
10. Strange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dt1zWdmB4c

all i can say is - i hope slumberland didn't get in debt to pay for this recording

nice!

cover art connection:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61%2B8K-FOk8L._SL500_AA300_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-IbMy9sNL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Loved the first album and they were great both times I've seen them play. First time I've heard 'Belong', 5 seconds of the Cocteau's followed by 10 secs of Smashing Pumpkins, followed by a pretty good song. Doesn't sound quite as angular and jangly as their early stuff but I'll go with it.

Actually it's probably more like 5 secs of The Sundays at the start rather than Cocteau's.

The new album's okay. The first track kicks in, perhaps kind of predictably, like 'Only Shallow', but it does it well. After that, the other tracks kind of hurtle around like The Field Mice in a supersonic tumbledryer. Flood and Alan Moulder have been drafted in to produce and mix this one, so it's a much bigger stadium sound with plenty of gated snares and wet reverb all over the drums. I just found it a bit one note really. Not unpleasant.

I've been a big fan of all the material they've released since the first album (though I kinda liked the first album too), but the song "Belong" is the first thing I'm kind of shrugging about. Hope it's the odd song out on the new album and the rest of it is less chugga-chugga overdistorted guitar and more like "Heart in Your Heartbreak" or "Lost Saint".

let's just say the whole thing is very very consistent. take that as you will.

*** full album streaming at thepainsofbeingpureatheart.com

'bout to listen i guess

yessss

If you know how to get mp3s from soundcloud, just sayin'...

This is great so far.

"My Terrible Friend" sounds like they snuck into the studio just as The Cure had finished recording "Just Like Heaven" and made their own song using all the same settings.

this is awesome btw

I was excited about this record, since there were a few songs I loved on the first one. But the new record sounds like music I listened to in high school, kind of paint by numbers Slumberland sound. I guess that's not entirely bad. I was hoping for more songs like 'A Teenager In Love,' or at least further exploring that sound.

'My Terrible Friend' is nice though.

The best thing I've ever heard this band do is called The One, the b-side to The Heart In Your Heartbreak. I can't really figure out how it didn't make the album. You can download it for free here...

http://www.fortunapop.com/free_download.php?id=20

super excited about this record. tune at the top of the thread is <3 <3 <3 <3

yeah that's the opening track and it is incredible

this album sounds like 2011's tribute to the smashing pumpkins.

to which i say, "fine"-- and then proceed to pull out gish & siamese dream instead

SP comparisons are plenty overstated imo

It's pretty much a direct line from old Slumberland albums to this.

Whatever. I unabashedly love this despite my unfamiliarity with early Slumberland stuff. It's possible that this will pale in comparison when i get around to it but Belong is fucking awesome for the time being.

didn't know they had it up on their site, got this today.

this is pretty good, probably better than the debut.

do not like this record. the production is a mistake imo.

tbh i would have preferred an album of 'side ponytail' x 12

i've ordered the lp and haven't listened to any streams of it yet. i'm scared because i really liked their s/t, and i fear that this will totally suck

it is not so good. don't know if you need to blame the production, the songs are dull enough on their own. when's the new depreciation guild record then?

didn't the dep guild split up?

yeah, looks like they have. oh well. not sure who this album is meant to appeal to, it's a bit of a one trick pony, quiet then loud but not very catchy, not twee except for the lyrics but still plenty weak. hmmm...a puzzler. new brown recluse album(i guess whatever that other thing that just came out was it wasn't the album) is pretty good though.

After listening a few more times, I'm largely disappointed with Belong. I didn't want to be, but I really can't seem to like any of the songs. I wanted more twee Smiths like love but something really current. Instead it feels like a bland record, really bland.

Loved the first album, really disappointed too in the new one. Listened to it twice, not nothing really clicked.. Don't really like the production either. I'm sure it will be successful though..

I'm with the "liked the first, this is meh" crowd. Such is life.

Co-sign.

Liked a song or two before the first one, liked a song or two on the first one, liked a song or two between the first and second ones, liking a few songs on the second one. They're pretty consistently "okay" for me.

i think this might be my most hated record sleeve in years

it's not a normal feeling to want to punch a record sleeve

Man, I was like 80% sold on the first one, but I'm 100% sold on this. This is so great, but I'm a huge fan of the 90s alt-rock thing going on.

Bring on the 90s alt rock. Soon every music video will take place running through the yards of suburban neighborhoods.

Really wasn't feeling this, but I'll give it another shot. (And I liked the first one.)

I like the first track and I like the track with the silly music video but can't remember the rest so much. Don't have much of a problem with the whole album overall but their first is truly great.

yeah the first track is really killer

Its the only track that warrants the Smashing Pumpkins comparisons, too

this seems really carelessly sequenced; still i love the sound and i think it's really well done. "belong" easily one of my favorite songs this year

I nominated Heart in Your Heartbreak for the 2010 trax poll, but I may have been the on person to vote for it (if I even voted for it, actually). Still my favorite on the album by far.

*on=only

just saw them live... delightful!

man, this first track is quite the earworm. What Velocity Girl might have sounded like if they had been given the big-budget Siamese Dream treatment.

except that sarah shannon has been replaced by the antithetical of dynamic dude with overly nasal delivery

gonna follow w/ the rest upthread that the production is what delivers this album, and ultimately mars it as well. i just think it's not even taken advantage of remotely. apart from evoking nostalgia i find little need for the guitarists to start ~gazing~

i didn't really like their old stuff but i fuck w/this album for sure.

I wish I had tickets for the cake shop. :(

i am excited for the gold-bears record tomorrow. pobpah, not so much.

Loved their first album, and I'm really digging this one. I'm partial to the sensitive guy "modern rock" sound, so I'm glad someone made an album like this.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart announces B-Sides collection, PERFECT RIGHT NOW ahead of reunion shows

Watch
"Say No To Love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMyURfKRTEM

...The ten tracks here compile the much-loved (and LONG out of print!) b-sides from the 7"s that accompanied that first album, the follow-up Higher Than The Stars EP, a couple of scarce tunes from split singles, and finally "Say No To Love," a spectacular song that points the way forward to the band's next chapter. There are some proper lost classics here, songs like "Kurt Cobain's Cardigan" and "The Pains of Being Pure at Heart" that still pack the dancefloors at indie discos from Göteborg to Glasgow and we couldn't be more excited to make them available again.

We'll let Kip from the band have the last word: "Many of these songs, like those that comprised our debut record, were written in that *now* – making up in wild pop fantasy what we couldn't quite yet achieve through musical ability. But even if that *now* is now an irrevocable *then,* I still believe that there is nothing better than making music with your friends and dreaming, as our Myspace page once proclaimed, of 'being the biggest band in the world—to about 18 people.'"

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008 - 2010
(Slumberland)
Street Date: Feb. 7, 2025
Formats: Vinyl / CD / Digital

Track List:

1. Kurt Cobain's Cardigan
2. Come Saturday ('Searching for the Now' Version)
3. Ramona
4. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
5. Side Ponytail
6. Higher Than the Stars
7. 103
8. Falling Over
9. Twins
10. Say No to Love

More links,band photo, tour poster in orig email:
https://forcefieldpr.cmail20.com/t/j-e-gktohl-tytlikjr-n/

wonder why "Lost Saint" isn't on there, one of their best songs