As a grouchy and cynical critic of most bands these days that label themselves pop, I was frightened before I gave The Pains of Being Pure at Heart a listen.
The band is a young Brooklyn quartet centering around boy/girl vocals who go by their first names and play "POP," as they note on their Web site. The unforgivable name and that brief description alone nearly made me try to forget I had heard of the band in a flash; I could just picture the overblown synths and too-loud-in-the-mix hand claps, with the cutesy interplay between boy and girl forcing sentiment down my throat.
But alas, my preconceived idea of the band was wrong, as it often is, and in its self-titled debut I had stumbled upon 2009's most pleasant surprise thus far.
The two-and-a-half minute track "Contender" begins mid-feedback burst, and like nearly every other track, sounds sweetly familiar and almost too simple to be true. In the numerous listens I've given the album, I've gone off the wall trying to figure out where all these melodies were snaked from -- "This Love is F***ing Right" and "The Tenure Itch" have melodic structures that have been around for a half-century -- but I had no such luck.
For those who need cheap comparisons, early My Bloody Valentine and Black Tambourine are both cited on the band's Web site as influences, but it's best to set them aside and just give the brisk 35-minute record a spin.
Though nearly every song is short, upbeat and catchy, each one is expertly paced and has been given the proper placement on the album. After the first two tracks have sunk in, you're ready for the clear standout, "Young Adult Friction," whose name is as cringe-worthy as that of the band who composed it.
The song seems to be the one that has garnered the most pre-release attention, and deservedly so. Each section of the sex-in-the-library story is just about perfect, from the sweeping choruses to the drums-and-bass breakdown that sounds like something The National would've tried if it reached its peak in the early '90s.
I haven't quite decided whether lines such as "you're taking toffee with your Vicodin, something sweet to forget about him" are smart, saccharine or both, but it doesn't really matter. The back and forth boy/girl vocals between "Kip" and "Peggy" are probably the most natural of the type since the inception of Yo La Tengo, and the second-person lyrics usually come off more as therapeutic and omniscient than personal.
Every time the band seems to swim too deep in the sap, it quickly twists itself out with the smallest of words or chord inversions. "Teenager in Love," which Camera Obscura must be kicking itself over for never writing, is saved by an off-key melodic change or two near the end and the fact that "with Christ and heroin" is tacked on to the title/chorus refrain. They're bubble-gum, but they never cross the line.
That is exactly what a self-described pop group should strive to do -- make the song as pleasant and hook-heavy as possible without turning it into a guilty pleasure. If The Pains of Being Pure at Heart can overcome having the most regrettable band name since Does It Offend You, Yeah?, I've got my money on this particular pop group being a band people will be talking about much more by year's end.
So let's hope that whenever Alex, Kurt, Kip and Peggy reconvene to record their follow-up, they continue to walk pop's narrow tightrope as impressively as they did this time around.
Grade: A-
