6. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Days of Abandon
Another release that reaches into the 80’s recording techniques bag of tricks. With each album, Pains of Being Pure at Heart expand their sound and move farther from their shoegazer roots. They’ve always had a strong pop sensibility, but it’s always been tempered by their more fuzz-rock influences. A few of these songs, though, sound like straight-up, shimmery, synthy, 80’s pop (I was going to make a joke about Berlin reforming here, but I guess they actually did get back together and I’m too lazy to think of some other band to reference). There are still some fuzzy guitars and enough rough edges to keep things from getting too schmaltzy, but a couple songs veer awfully close to bad 80’s teen movie soundtrack territory.
I’m realizing that this doesn’t sound like a particularly good review, and honestly, this was the album I had the hardest time placing. If you put aside some aspects of the production values and a couple of the cheesier ballads, there’s actually a lot that I liked. Simple and Sure, Kelly, and Eurydice have been on heavy rotation pretty much since the album came out. Masokissed and Life After Life are wonderful throwbacks to the jangly rock of The Smiths or early REM with a fuller, richer sound. Until the Sun Explodes is an unabashedly sweet love song. It’s kind of a weird album in that it’s so backloaded. The second half of the record completely outshines the first, so it takes a while to get to the really good stuff. But when you do finally get there, the good stuff is soooooooooo gooooooooood.
No comments:
Post a Comment