While people in suits carried boxes out of high-rise buildings in the global depression of September ‘08, the folks at Slumberland Records must have been pinching themselves: they were about to release Alight of Night, the debut album by Crystal Stilts, and ‘Everything With You’ by The Pains of Being Pure At Heart.
Both bands were based in Brooklyn, and both were bestowed with praise, though there ends the comparison. The Stilts were Interpol locked in a garage, mumbling phrases like postmodern tapestries. The Pains were dreamy indie pop shot through with the fuzz of Siamese Dream Smashing Pumpkins. Their self-titled album, released by Slumberland four months after ‘Everything With You’, was a blissful collection of melodies and wistful narratives, expertly crafted with the veneer of gifted amateurs doing it for the love. Brilliant enough to make you forget that the markets were crashing and brilliant enough to make you wish you were 19 even if you were 19.
Perfect Right Now is an amalgamation of b-sides, The Pains’ Higher Than The Stars EP, and ‘Say No to Love’, which we’ll come to shortly. It’s a wonder that first track ‘Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan’ wasn’t included on the eponymous debut album. Pounding drums, bright guitar riff, lyrics about escape and ‘the last night of our young lives’ – surely a contender? ‘Come Saturday’ is not a paean to the beautiful game, as The Pains are American, and no doubt they refer to football as ‘soccer’. That said, given the band’s devotion to the C86 scene and Sarah Records, the track could easily have been a sing-song itinerary of match day. In reality, it’s a rollicking and lovely crystallisation of the anticipation of a visit from a loved one. “Who cares if there’s a party somewhere / We’re gonna stay in” sounds impossibly exciting here.
Next track ‘Ramona’ is unusually sedate for The Pains, but you’ll still love it, if only for the certifiable fact that it would have been a top 5 hit in any indie chart compiled in 1987. ‘The Pains of Being At Pure Heart’ picks up the pace again, with frontman Kip Bergman and keyboardist Peggy Wang cheerfully declaring that they will never die. ‘Side Ponytail’ sounds like a Pains prototype, and is over before two minutes are up. The ‘Just Like Heaven’ synth on ‘Higher Than The Stars’ is reason enough to fall in love with this utterly gorgeous indie pop gem. ‘103’ is a disarming ditty about a failed death wish, and on ‘Falling Over’, Bergman sounds more than a little like Morrissey as he moans about “our sad century”. Despite its similarly bleak lyrics, ‘Twins’ is made for a teen drama featuring beautiful people in their 20s. And then we end with ‘Say No To Love’. Lyrically, it’s the antithesis of 94% of pop songs, but who cares about lyrics when there’s a great big Cure riff that will have you moving like a very giddy Robert Smith?
If you were 19 when The Pains of Being Pure At Heart was released, you will now be 35 and nursing a set of grievances that surely only pop music can resolve. You could locate said album in your vast vinyl collection and ache for those days when you were a carefree teenager during a very worrisome burp of late capitalism. Or you could listen to Perfect Right Now.
Perfect Right Now is out now on Slumberland Records.
