album of the week: 5.3

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Belong

2011

why you'll love it: young love in a 80's ballad vibe.

why you'll hate it: the 80's were terrible!

A few weeks ago, we looked at TV on The Radio's Nine Types of Light. Among other things, I was very impressed with their ability to craft love songs that felt mature, honest, and thoughtful. Belong is on the other end of the spectrum. Their love songs are juvenile, exaggerated, and impulsive.

You'd expect a name like The Pains of Being Pure At Heart to lay on the cheese thick, but their self titled debut found its way to me somehow last year, and really won me over. Either their sappy lyrics were restrained on that release, or the indie surf rock fuzz managed to distract me entirely. I came away glibly praising them as "No Age, but good!"

Belong starts off on the right foot, with a nice pace. A bit more bubblegum than the first album, but good distorted pop. After that, the assaults begin with eye-rolling catch phrases. The music eventually gets sappier as well. We're talking high school prom class of '86 sap. The Pains' production has an old school feel, but they're tapping into a subculture of the past that should be dead and buried. Halfway into the album, I feel trapped in a John Hughes film, and those are films I do NOT want to be in.

If you're still nostalgic for 80's pop ballads, and enjoy unrealistic on-the-nose love song lyrics, then you've hit the jackpot. If not, Belong is audio repulsion gel.