The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Inspiringly amateurish, incredibly twee, a dreamy, Shoegaze influenced sense of melody – at times listening to “The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart” feels like getting hit over the head with an Oscar Wilde novel. This is Indie-Pop in its sweetest and most charming variety.
There were hundreds of bands like this, most of them British, in the early nineties, but only a few as good as these four boys and girls from New York City.
If you like trebly jingle-jangle Pop in the vein of Rocketship, The Smiths and The Field Mice or noisier stuff like The Jesus And Mary Chain, you probably already have their self-titled debut Album and their second EP “Higher Than The Stars” sitting on your shelf. Also you will be thrilled to hear, that their second Album “Belong” is set to be released a month from now.
Releases:
“The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart” (EP, Painbow, 2007)
“The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart” (Album, Slumberand, 2007)
“Higher Than The Stars” (EP, Slumberland, 2009)
“Belong” (Album, Slumberland, March 29, 2011)
www.thepainsofbeingpureatheart.com
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Even though a remarkable amount of contemporary bands has been influenced by Neutral Milk Hotel and this record in particular, it still feels pretty odd. This is one of the most emotionally challenging pieces of music ever to be recorded.
Jeff Mangum sings like he invented it. He sings as if no human being had ever sung before and he seems determined to use his newly found tool to make his feelings known.
His mantra-like singing may point in that direction, too, but in the end it’s his lyrical style and attention to detail that often reminds me of Leonard Cohen.
Mangum tells the listener a sad and yet incredibly poetic story about growing up, love, sex, religion and death, which is loosely based on the story of Jewish holocaust victim Anne Frank and unravels itself slowly over the course of the whole album. Mangum later said in an interview that this record got its profound sadness from a recurring dream he had about a Jewish family fleeing from the Nazis after having read Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl”.
Musically “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” ranges from soft acoustic guitar strumming to fuzz-rock outbursts and weighty orchestration. Simply overwhelming at times, this isn’t an everyday record, but one you should always keep close because of its uniqueness. I never found another album that touches me the way “In the Aeroplane Over The Sea” does.
1998, Merge Records
Reissued 2005 on Domino/Merge Records.
If you love this record, and I’m confident you will after listening to it a few times, you might like “Hometowns” by The Rural Alberta Advantage, “Castaways And Cutouts” by The Decemberists and “The Flying Club Cup” by Beirut too.
When I was seven my father said to me,
‘But you can’t swim.’
And I’ve never dreamed of the sea again.
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
The first album you put on a music blog always says something, so I might as well make a point of it. The point being that this blog is about taste. Not journalism, not digging up obscure indie gems or writing about things no one has ever written about before.
Almost everyone who has written about popular music since the early nineties has written about “Loveless”. About how Kevin Shields went insane during the production of this masterpiece, about how it was recorded in nineteen different studios, about how the production costs nearly destroyed Creation Records, about how most recording engineers were, according to Shields, no good except for making coffee.
I want to write about “Loveless” simply because I can listen to it every day without getting tired of it. It is always rough but never grating, always sweet but never saccharine. It washes over you like a wave of pink cotton candy but never washes you away.
Although the lyrics tend to be total gibberish My Bloody Valentine always seem to have something important to say, something no one else but you is supposed to hear. The feeling that they’re whispering a dirty secret directly into my ear never leaves me when listening to “Loveless” and it makes every listen feel like the first one.
Shoegaze records can often come off as distant and unpersonal, “Loveless” on the other hand welcomes you in, tells you to slip between its layers and “sleep like a pillow”. It’s like a long hug compared to a peck on the cheek and that’s why “Loveless” is the most important shoegazing record of all time.
1991, Creation Records
Reissued 2003 on Plain.
If you like this, be sure to check out “Isn’t Anything” by My Bloody Valentine, “Souvlaki” by Slowdive and “Spooky” by Lush.
With the internet and its infinite possibilities at your fingertips it has gotten remarkably easy to collect music. You have access to almost everything that has ever been released on compact disc in a matter of seconds and you can easily gather detailed information about artists most people will never have heard of. But also, you don’t have to make informed decisions anymore. In fact, you don’t have to decide at all.
Imagine yourself in a record store twenty years ago. Now think about how much money you can spend on records. Ain’t that much, right?
I suppose most of you won’t be able or willing to buy more than five records a month, so you’ll have to make decisions. Not only do you have to determine how to use your limited financial resources, you also have to keep in mind that you will spend a few hundred hours with each of your purchases, considering you don’t have a hundred gigabytes worth of digital audio files to resort to.
The limiting factor back then was money, obviously. Since the average music “consumer” has, unfortunately, decided not to pay for the music he or she loves so much, money isn’t really an issue anymore. But time is.
How many hours and minutes do you spend actively listening to music on an average working day? One, maybe two hours? Do you want to waste these precious moments with interchangeable crap? I believe not.
So start thinking about making decisions and thus giving music back its importance. Talk with your friends about what you’re listening instead of just hooking up your external hard drives to give them everything you have. Go visit your local record store and talk to the guy or girl behind the counter, because odds are they really know a thing or two about music. Start reading real music journalism instead of downloading everything that gets namedropped anywhere. Go to shows. Share the music you love with the people you love by sitting them in front of your stereo or by putting headphones on their ears.
The first thing I do when I’m starting to like someone is showing them music. Artists they might love, songs that, if I’m lucky, will make them happy, so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m sharing. I’m sharing what I love because you might love it too.
