Place the record on the deck and let the needle hit the groove.
Almost from the first second to the last, ‘Belong’ refuses to let up. The latest offering from Brooklyn types The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, it finds the band moving beyond hipster cliques and into the realms of pure pop. Sure, that sense of twee innocence remains – they’re call The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart fer Christ sakes – but added to this is a bolstered sound, which rings out clear and true across ten tracks.
“To me, I think the best kind of music is music which doesn’t have to be explained or interpreted to really enjoy it”, claims singer Kip Berman. “We’ve always thought of ourselves as a pop band, who want to produce the sort of instantaneous feeling that a pop song can give you. That’s really what we hoped to achieve with this record. Not in a superficial way, but we just wanted people to know right away what a song was going to be like, what it was all about. The same quality that bands like The Ramones had, or Weezer – that sense of immediate pop feeling.”
Pop is more than just a three letter word. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are placing themselves in a lineage, one that contains Orange Juice and Sarah Records but also has room for more esoteric, less ‘on trend’ fare. During the course of our interview Kip Berman name checks records from Depeche Mode and Nick Cave, The Pastels and Weezer. Yet this isn’t record collection rock – the Brooklyn group have their own voice, one that thrives on a fleeting pop touch. “I always thought the songwriting itself was immediate, I mean we never had a minute and a half intros. We never wanted to fool the listener, it was always about getting some chords together on the guitar and running with it.”
Cult indie dons, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart found the opportunity to work with legendary producer Flood too much to pass over. Initially set to work with Alan Moulder, the producer instead took the mixing chair and left Flood to work with the group. “These are options that indie bands like ours from America don’t really have. It’s like a different world from what we’re used to. The option of saying ‘yes’ was so much cooler than turning it down. It’s not that they’re famous but because they’re famous for a particular sound. They’ve done so much great music with bands which we are really inspired by. It felt like we were doing something maybe beyond ourselves, but we were doing it with good intentions. It wasn’t like we went and got someone well known to produce us, it was someone who we knew could help us achieve what we wanted to achieve.”
Yet the decision still provoked messageboard rants from the blinkered self-appointed indie royalty. Best known for his work with Smashing Pumpkins, Flood has helped push bands to global success but has also worked on a multitude of vital, lesser known records. “We could have put a $20 distortion pedal on there and sounded really lo-fi if we wanted to. It’s never been our ambition, we just wanted to write the best pop songs we could. We’re really proud of the way this record came together. We’ve been excited about these songs for a while and we’re just glad we got to record them.”
The mention of indie snobbery seems to flick a switch inside Kip Berman. Struggling to control his frustration, the singer flicks through his mental record rack to throw up some counter examples. “It seems so contrived! I never actually like to speak ill of anyone but there seems to be this fake sense that DIY has this sound. Bands wanted to sound the best they could. In 1987 The Pastels would go into the studio and try to make the record sound as good as they could get it. Now people concentrate on getting these scratchy parts to somehow make things more authentic” he rants. “I love a lot of the British and Scottish indie bands of the 80s and 90s, like Teenage Fanclub’s first record then followed by ‘Bandwagonesque’ – those are great rock records, the band were doing the best they could. I really admire that – it doesn’t have to be perfect, we’re not stadium rock people but we try to do the best we can. That’s sort of the ethos that informs us.”
Flood has a reputation for achieving a certain type of sound – a vibrant, widescreen sense of sonics that pushes artists onto the next level. ‘Belong’ positively shimmers, with the production draping the pop songwriting in a warm sheen. Continuing, Kip Berman explains that the producer is far from an intimidating prospect in the studio. “The realisation that he’s been in the room while some of those great records have been made… It’s intimidating and rightly so – we should be scared of him. Aside from his name being Flood, you realise pretty soon that he’s just really down to earth and approachable. He’s there to help you. It’s a weird shift in dynamic as you’re telling this person who knows more than you what you want to do. He should be in charge but in a weird sort of way things go better when you tell him what you want to achieve, what the sounds are in your head. He throws out ideas too.“
“People have these ideas about having Martin Hannett as a producer, or these crazy Phil Spector stories, but I would say that Flood is someone who could show up to your summer barbeque as your cool uncle and have these stories about making records with Trent Reznor and Nick Cave. He’s extremely approachable and a really lovely person.”
Out now, ‘Belong’ has – somewhat predictably – split fans. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart seem to sound physically larger, more confident than before, Yet this has been achieved without some macho, ‘rock’ streak. Lyrically, Kip Berman once again focuses on a female perspective – “women make up 52% of the world’s population they should be in pop songs too!” – before slipping into a deep slumber.
“There’s a weird shift where the first record was very narrative based, a really literal sense of a cause and effect relationship. Language is used in a really straight forward way. With this record it’s far more evocative, it’s more like the language of dreams. It’s very imagistic. It works in a different way, like language isn’t there just to tell a story – it’s not prose anymore. It’s not like ’then we went to the library’. It’s a little more evocative and removed from a literal sense of language. Which is also different, it’s like a different way of expressing something.”
Finishing, Kip Berman nails home his ideal of pop being a purely physical form of music. To appreciate it, he argues, all you should to do is enjoy it. “It’s not meant to be intellectual. It’s pop music, it’s supposed to resonate with you without having to go through your brain – it should go straight to your heart. That kind of music should go to the heart not to the brain. There’s great music that goes to the brain but for who we are and what we want to express it’s never about something that needs to be intellectualised to be appreciated.“
‘Belong’ is out now. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart return for a British tour this summer.
