The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong

3.1 out of 5

As a teenager I listened to a lot of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream. The record dropped during my first year of high school, and seemed to nicely bridge a gap between the Grunge music the Pumpkins so liberally “borrowed” from, and the top 40 of the day. And, although Billy Corgan et al would go on to bloated excess, Zwan and The Future Embrace, something about Siamese Dream stuck with me. Perhaps it was the big, anthemic choruses paired with angst-ridden guitar distortion, or maybe it was simply that I was a 13 year-old who played electric guitar. In any event, it worked.

Thus, I was greeted with a welcome surprise upon my first spin of Belong, the follow-up to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled debut. Belong’s title track immediately tugged at my heartstrings. That clean finger-picked guitar intro crushed by a wave of distortion, immediately transported me back to my gawky, insecure teenage self. The track’s chorus had me so completely lost in an early nineties moment that it took a discerning voice to bring me back to 2011: “Hey, I’ve heard this song before. Who is this again?” From high atop music-pomp mountain, I shot back: “You couldn’t have heard it before, it was just released today.” But the damage had been done, and faster than I could say “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”, I realized what was happening: I was being nostalgically manipulated. I knew however that as clever as TPOBPAH were, they couldn’t have accomplished such a sound alone. There was clearly a larger mastermind at work. Upon sifting through the album’s production credits the culprits revealed themselves: Alan Moulder, and Flood; the very individuals who mixed and produced the aforementioned Mellon Collie…

TPOBPAH’s influences don’t end with the Pumpkins. Belong also contains elements of several impressive acts from across the pond: The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and The Cure, all of whom have worked with either Moulder, Flood or both. To be clear, I’m not a proponent of crucifying bands for wearing their influences on their sleeves. In the realm of indie-rock, carving out a truly unique sound in this day and age is difficult, if not impossible, and naturally if you’re going to play late 80’s, early 90’s alt-rock and shoe-gaze, you may as well source the best. I do, however, expect a band that references said artists to bring something unique to the table, and that’s where TPOBPAH fall flat. Though Belong is hooky, and plays well cover-to-cover, it lacks the grit, substance and, dare I say, sincerity necessary to make it anything more than a decent sophomore record.

Take “Anne with an E” for example, which is yet another retreading of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey”. You know how this one goes, that: “thump, thump, thump, clang” of the alternating kick-drum and tambourine hi-hat, complemented with dreamy, reverbed vocals. Granted, at this point, no one other than Phil Spector (who first used the drum line in the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”) can claim its ownership but can we please move on to something, anything containing an iota of originality? Then there’s “My Terrible Friend”. The track nails The Cure’s sound so well it’s frightening: the synths, the Simon Gallup bass line, it’s all there for you to bop away with glee. That is until front-man Kip Berman shows-up to the party. His wafer thin vocals take away from several tracks on Belong, and when coupled with lazy lyrics, the results are near stomach churning: “Everyone is pretty and fun, everyone is lovely and young, everyone is gentle and gone, but everyone’s just everyone.” It’s like taking a bowl of fruit loops and then pouring honey all over it.

Admittedly, anyone could point to an abundance of similarly weak passages among Billy Corgan’s catalogue or Robert Smith’s for that matter. The difference is, though, that for every “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, Corgan would give you a “1979”. Likewise, for every “Friday I’m in Love” Smith would give you a “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”. In other words, there was an equal dose of sweet and sour, and, love it or hate it, you have to admit that there was 100% commitment to the material. Unfortunately, TPOBPAH are as sweet as molasses, and though it’s fun for a few tracks, the formula wears thin and just might have you reaching for some insulin.

- Ewan Christie