The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Garage, London 04/08/09

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Photo credit: Valerio Berdini :: More shots can be found here.

Brooklyn band, The Pains of Being at Heart, have somehow managed to take the indie world by storm with their competently played, but basic and perhaps repetitive noise-pop. But then they deserve to, because their brand of pop is wonderful, the sort of music one falls in love with. Their self titled debut album is one of my favourite records released this year, and this was reinforced when I saw them back in February.

TPoBPaH have grown up a lot since I saw last saw them, previously they barely had enough songs to fill a relatively short slot, and they only reluctantly played stand out song ‘Teenager in Love’, claiming it didn’t sound right live. This time they easily filled a set, and encore and ‘Teenager in Love took’ pride of place in middle of their set, although they were right in thinking it doesn’t sound quite right live. They are still as adorable as they ever were, keyboard player Penny Wang charming the crowd with cute banter. It is difficult not to smile, and enjoy TPoBPaH when they are in full swing.. However the repetitive nature of their music does become much more noticeable when heard live, being regrettably difficult to tell one song from another. A lot of the charm of the album is lost when its songs are played in a live setting; songs sounding far closer to basic pop songs then they do on record. Touches that made me fall in love with their album, such as the guitar solo in ‘Everything With You’, are ineffective or inaudible live.

This is not to say that The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are not an enjoyable live act, they easily won over an already enamoured crowd, getting the crowd enthusiastically dancing and singing along to songs such as recently released single ‘Come Saturday’. Seeing TPoBPaH live for the second time has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for them, and I continue to look forward to their EP due in October.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on MySpace