The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

It's overstating the case to claim that The Pains of Being Pure At Heart singlehandedly started The Great Indiepop Revival, but they were certainly among the first contemporary bands to take the British C86 scene (plus its various influences and offshoots) as their musical starting point. Built on the singer-songwriter partnership of guitarist Kip Berman and keyboardist Peggy Wang and sporting one of the most awkward names since We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It (supposedly derived from a children's book written by a friend of Berman), the Pains formed in 2007. Their updating of the classic UK indie guitar sound of the late '80s (the era bracketed roughly by The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless) garnered immediate praise and got a strong credibility boost when the revered indie imprint Slumberland Records (which had been all but dormant since the late '90s) snatched up the band after only a couple of DIY singles. The band's self-titled 2009 debut, a couple years' worth of single and EP sides with a handful of newer songs, was one of the year's most praised records, while the all-new EP Higher Than The Stars suggested a calmer new direction later that same year. 2011's sophomore album Belong cemented the band's connection to the golden age of alternative rock, featuring production by Flood (Depeche Mode, Nick Cave) and mixing by Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine).

Critical Questions for Kip Berman (from our 4/4/2011 newsletter)

Critical Mob: Several of the songs on your debut record were old favorites that had been written long before its release date. How has it been entering the studio with a completely new batch of songs for the second go-around?
Kip Berman: Our first album was finished in the summer of 2008 and didn't see release until February 2009. We had plenty of time and we kept writing songs up until we went into the studio last summer. Unlike the first album, we had a lot of songs to choose from this time, and that allowed us to shape it with our favorites and put songs together that made sense as an album. There's a difference between a singles collection and an album, and thinking about that was really helpful. That's why a song like "Say No to Love" isn't on the record, but "Anne With an E" is.

I remember you telling me in a previous interview that the debut album's cover art was a reflection of the themes of friendship and companionship in the lyrics. What inspired the album cover this time?
We really loved the artist that let us use his painting for the "Say No to Love" seven-inch and wanted to keep working with him, as his work just intuitively felt right for us. Just like the first record and the Higher Than the Stars EP kept a distinct visual style, we wanted this record to maintain that same visual consistency.

I think the most obvious thing is it's in color, which to us makes sense in terms of how the record sounds compared to our first one. Instead of just "fuzz pedal on/fuzz pedal off" kind of dynamics, there's a lot more happening in these songs. The other thing is that, even though it's a beautiful and evocative image, there is a subtle black eye you don't really notice at first.

Your new single, "Belong," is a lot more guitar-heavy than what you've done in the past. Can fans expect more of the same throughout the album?
We wanted to make a record that felt very American, visceral and true to the people we are and where we came from. We grew up pretty normal and a lot of our first introduction to alternative music was these very monumental, ambitious sounding alternative rock albums, like Nirvana's Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Weezer's Blue Album and Pinkerton and even Sonic Youth's Goo and Dirty.

There was this sonic optimism in that music, and despite the often cryptic lyrics and political ambivalence, there was this belief that the electric guitar and VOLUME was still the most emphatic way to communicate true emotion, immediate emotion. Bands could be ambivalent about fame and the mainstream's appropriation and commodification of underground/alternative culture, but they all seemed to agree on playing loud!

So, do you see yourselves as more 'pop' or 'rock'? Or do you even think of those words?
We always think of ourselves as pop. From the day in January 2007 we started our Myspace page, that's what it's always said. What's most important to us are songs. There's something timeless about what makes a good pop song: not a lot has really changed since 1963 and 2011, and yet a lot has really changed. But I look at the records I own and they aren't all one genre: what unites them is that I like the songs. I don't know what Exploding Hearts has to do with Leonard Cohen, or The Ramones has to do with O.M.D., or what The Promise Ring has to do with Close Lobsters, or what My Favorite has to do with Titus Andronicus, but all those bands wrote great songs.

For a band that utilizes two vocalists, how do you write parts for you and Peggy, and decide who sings what?
Peggy and I weirdly have the same voice: actually Alex is pretty close too. We do backup vocals in the studio and we can't figure out who is actually singing when we listen back to it.

A lot of critics compare Pains' sound to older Slumberland bands like Black Tambourine. Before you signed with the label, how familiar were you with the older Slumberland bands?
Very! The comparison is flattering (and I'd mention Rocketship, The Aislers Set and Velocity Girl to name a few more SLR bands too). We grew up with Slumberland representing the best of noisy American indiepop. But what got us really excited about working with the label is that it isn't just a nostalgic thing. When he agreed to put out our record, Mike (Schulman, label owner) was starting to work with a lot of the local/contemporary bands we really admired (Crystal Stilts, Pants Yell!) and has gone on to put out great records by Weekend, Frankie Rose and the Outs and a GREAT re-issue by lost Swiss post-punk should-be-legends, Chin Chin.

Are there bands you get compared to where you don't hear the connection yourselves? What bands influenced you that no one seems to have picked up on?
Usually the comparison is really flattering, even if it's not always accurate. I mean, it's usually bands that are way better and more important than us, so it's hard not to be feel honored to be mentioned in the same breath as that sort of stuff. There's nothing worse than bands lamenting being "pigeonholed" or claiming they invented music. All creativity is just imperfect acts of approximation of your heroes and ideals. The bands that inspire us were themselves inspired by other bands growing up - it's more cool to realize you're part of a tradition than to claim you're somehow removed from human history.

Do you consider yourselves part of a particular scene? If so, what other bands do you consider your peers? Is it primarily a geographical thing or are there other bands around that you feel an aesthetic kinship with?
American bands initially get uneasy at the idea of "scene" as it conjures some superficial grouping of bands for the purpose of marketing -- even if it's accurate. It also has an implicit ephemeral quality, in that all scenes die, and new scenes emerge, etc. But as a fan of music (which I've been WAY longer than actually being in a band) it makes sense and is helpful if you're reading about music.

There are a lot of bands like ours, and that doesn't bother us. Actually, it's exciting to us! If people write about us in the same breath as contemporary bands like Crystal Stilts, Weekend, Vivian Girls or Wild Nothing, that's a compliment because I am personally big fans of those bands. I hope that if someone likes our music, they'll take the time to not only look at the other bands that are, for purposes of journalistic/geographic/historical convenience in our "scene," but also the older bands that influenced the music we make and are exceptionally under appreciated.

We are sort of the opposite of competitive, and hope people that love music have the opportunity to discover as much of the stuff they (and we) like as possible. I mean, that's how we learned about things. So if you have a second, please go listen to My Favorite's Love at Absolute Zero, My Bloody Valentine's Sunny Sundae Smile EP, Rocketship's A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness, Comet Gain's Realistes, The Pastels' Sittin' Pretty and Close Lobsters' Foxheads Stalk This Land, as well as Felt, Teenage Fanclub, Black Tambourine, Yo La Tengo and basically anything on these labels: Creation, Slumberland, Postcard, El Records, Le Grande Magistery, Captured Tracks, Cloudberry, Magic Marker, and Fortuna Pop. You'll see where we get all our best ideas.

Plus, take the time to listen to new stuff like Weekend's Sports, Crystal Stilts' In Love With Oblivion, Vivian Girls' Share the Joy, Hooray for Earth's True Loves, Wild Nothing's Gemini, Twin Sister, Twin Shadow, Beach Fossils, Catwalk, and Minks' By the Hedge, which is a record I've been listening to a lot lately .

In a few years, you guys have gone from playing to handfuls of people to playing festivals like Pitchfork. Has getting a chance to do more touring and festival playing affected your outlook as a band in any way?
Well, we definitely never anticipated getting to tour at all, so just getting to experience that has been a thrill and also made us a lot (and we're not saying we're good, but) "better" as a live band. I think playing the big shows made us realize how much we initially felt lost in those settings - so we worked hard to write better songs and the experience of doing it a few times made us more comfortable with jumping on a stage with no soundcheck and hopefully not being terrible. Bands aren't fully formed from the get-go, nor should they be, but it's strange to go from playing for two years at Cake Shop to 30 friends and then expect the same kind of dynamic to exist when you're standing in front of thousands of strangers at a big summer festival.

Still, now that we've done it a couple times, it's super fun and really such a positive, awesome feeling. I'm excited that we're playing Coachella, which is so incredible and unexpected. Plus, we're first and foremost music fans, and you get to hang out and see a lot of bands you'd normally not get a chance to. For example, now I am fully aware that Damian Abraham from Fucked Up is perhaps the smartest, nicest coolest person ever.

Pains allegedly turned down some commercial offers lately. Are you turned off to that concept as a whole, or is it more circumstantial?
No, we are not self-righteous assholes. I hope. We play pop music. We would be psyched to have our music in movies and TV. Jon Caramanica in The New York Times even wrote an article in 2009 beseeching Gossip Girl to use our songs, but sadly they didn't. Still, it was nice of him to try. We are a pop band, and we get a thrill out of any sort of intersection with our music and pop culture. Also, LOTS of way cooler bands than us do ads, so it's not something that we wouldn't consider at some point, like, if it was for Haribo Gummi Bears.

But at issue was (and it was just one offer) that we didn't want people to hear our new music for the first time as a song in a commercial before they had a chance to hear it as a record. That's all it was, really. I was an idiot for posting about it online, and looking back on things, yeah, that was pretty self-righteous asshole territory. I'm sorry.