borrelli told me to listen to this: the pains of being pure at heart – the pains of being pure at heart
My friend Mike Borrelli and his special lady Megan have a late-night radio show on CFMU in Hamilton. The show is called myboytheriotgirl and they play all sorts of new music in the “indie” “genre”. Often the music is really good and I talk to them on the internet about how good it is, like the time I heard “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” by the Mountain Goats and I had all these eloquent words of praise to transmit to Megan over the internet. Words like “that Lovecraft in Brooklyn song is really, really, really, really good.” Sometimes they mispronounce the names of the bands they play and I call them on it.
One time they played “The Ghost of You Lingers” by Spoon and I had a severe allergic reaction to it and lambasted Borrelli about how Spoon’s music is bad and he should feel bad. It’s just this staccato piano thing, occasional static in the background and people hooting into microphones running through reverb boxes. While I will concede that this is indeed music, it is not good music.
The upshot of the Spoon Ordeal was a promise from me to listen to the offending album, infuriatingly titled Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (hereafter abbreviated to Gax5), start to finish, and post a thoughtful and evenhanded review on the internets. And then kick Borrelli in the dick. I have so far failed to deliver on either count.
One reason I have failed to render a review is that I am woefully unprepared and unqualified to review music. My tastes run narrow, and tend to go through extended periods of stagnation punctuated by brief bouts of experimentation with new sounds. This leaves me with a limited set of reference points for comparing musical merits, and a habit of just listening to a whole bunch of Plaskett and Tragically Hip over and over again.
In an effort to shift me to a healthier habit of regularly listening to new sounds, Borrelli burned for a me a CD jammed full of the finest albums 2009 had to offer. To avoid flicking on the shuffle function and liberally applying the “next track” control as I make my way through this batch of lovingly curated tunes, I have resolved to give each album a good listen in its entirety, in a distraction-free environment, wearing my Very Large Headphones, and then post my impressions. Note that I’m not saying “review”. You’re just getting raw, unfiltered first impressions. And if I feel like I should name drop and can’t think of a name to drop, I’ll just make one up.
With the long introduction out of the way, here is my nonreview of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s 2009 debut, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart:
For starters, we must never refer to this album as “The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled debut”. The “name of band’s self-titled” construction is for bands with one- to five-syllable names. Marlon Finch has a self-titled album. Everything Tastes Brown has a self-titled album. Deathcetera’s comeback record after a six-year hiatus and the death of their thereminist was a self-titled album. But The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have decided that true aficionados of their fuzzy, jangly faux-British sounds should have to dedicate entire hours of their lives to pronouncing their name, so people who want to write about their album on the internet should man up and type out all the letters twice. Don’t slack off and try to get away with a half measure.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sound like the result of a drunk lorry driver dumping a truckload of fuzzboxes into the front garden of the (presumably) dapper gent who plays guitar in Belle and Sebastian. Or like if Belle and Sebastian’s bassist hired a life coach who had forged his credentials and then all the life coach did was convince the bassist to be angry at his bass. Or like if the members of Belle and Sebastian who are responsible for the singing had a crisis of confidence and decided to stop singing clearly and earnestly about tea and train stations and sexual harassment in the workplace and instead to mumble-sing into a reverb box about….
Well that’s the thing. These songs aren’t sticking in my head, except the one that appears to be about incest. They have some friendly jangle and liberal distortion and they do not offend the ear, but neither do they make me want to fire up an internet communication session and announce to someone “The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s 2009 debut album, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, is really, really, really, really good.”
Also, I promised myself I’d make it to the end of this without writing “twee”, but who am I kidding?
