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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - T Shirt

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If Stephen Pastel actually threw Aggi off the bridge and married Black Tambourine's Pam Berry and had four babies that formed a pop band.

Meet The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, a New York four-piece who plays dreamy, noisy POP with boy/girl vocals, blissful melodies and blistering drums.

PRESS:

Pitchfork - Best New Music
Songs that will appeal beyond the confines of subcultures: Anyone with a weakness for trebly, melancholy pop music will find a lot to like about this record.

Drowned in Sound
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have crafted an impeccable debut way beyond their years, and any misconceptions about them being mere revivalists will surely be diminished instantaneously upon hearing this most accomplished of long players

Skatterbrain
My infallible love for The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart is no secret at all. I think I summed it up to the best of my cheesy abilities in the fanzine included with their Atomic Beat split 7" earlier this year. What they're doing is beautiful and perfect and wonderfully genuine – AND not to mention – totally fucking consistent! Have they got a bad song? Nope. And they probably never will as long as they keep moving in the direction they're headed in. Their new single "Everything With You" is the perfect noisy pop song. Kip and Peggy's vocal harmonies sound gorgeous floating above the ringing guitar wash and OH HEY SOLO! "Everything With You" is the first single from their previously mentioned debut LP and will be out on the mighty Slumberland Records (US) and Fortuna POP (UK) in the fall. BUT! You can go hear it right now streaming on the Pobpah MySpace and bask in it's life-affirming fantasticness! God I love pop songs.

Chicago Reader
"Their recent Slumberland debut is nearly flawless: rife with urgency and big hooks that keen and carom through epic guitar fuzz."

NME
it’s much more than the sum of its parts and too effortlessly effervescent to be studied. Pure indie-pop to hold close to your heart.

NME - Live Review
Swelling, surging dream-gaze jubilance, that never loses itself in the walls-of-sound. There's a sharp, crystal melody to all their tracks that leave the songs swirling round your head like giddy school girl on her way home from being asked out by her dream boy after math class.

The Yellow Stereo- "Everything With You"
The single just screams for continuous replay, as the catchy boy/girl harmonies wonderfully gel with the jangly, distorted guitars that echoes early My Bloody Valentine and Black Tambourine. There’s also this guitar solo near the end of the song that completely rocked my face off, considering i’ve never heard anything of the ilk since possibly the 90s (no joke, no one does solos like this anymore).

Pop Tarts Suck Toasted
The record is one of those records that takes absolutely no time to fall in love with. From the opening notes of the lead track "Contender" you know you are listening to something powerful, catchy, and brilliant. It's not so much that they just write great pop songs, it's that they feel like they are opening their veins and bleeding on the paper each time they write lyrics and it all comes through with an eerily sunny sound...this band is the real deal

Dusted
This is an important record for these times, a game changer

Colour Me Impressed
The best indiepop album of the last 10 years and what may possibly be the best album of 2009

Sound Bites
A total charmer: 10 songs, endless hooks, clever lyrics, bad puns, and fuzzy guitars.

Losing Today "Everything With You"
"‘everything with you’ is your pure unadulterated fix of dogs bollocks bright eyed and cute with it radiant pop the kind that makes you tingle from the inside out, lovingly sugar dipped in sheens of pulse racing effervescence and to these ears sounding not so dissimilar to the kind of stuff mined for your discerning delight by the likes of imprints such as Bus Stop, Summershine and HOL / MBV era Creation while blissfully gliding about your senses like some sun soaked honey combed slice of heart string tweaking bliss pop happily being crafted by a three way collaboration between the Pastels, Velvet Crush and early career Teenage Fanclub. Does it for us...buy on sight."

Contact Music - "Come Saturday" 9/10
‘Come Saturday’ just might be the fizziest, most incessant three minutes of sprightly pop these ears have been exposed to all year. Combining the glorious, pastel-shaded fuzz of a pre-Creation My Bloody Valentine with the danceable quirkiness of The Shins, ‘Come Saturday’ is one of those songs that demands your attention and then won’t go away for months, not that you’d particularly want it to, of course…

The Guardian
"Possibly the lushest piece of noise-pop to come out of the Big Apple in 2008, if not the US."

Indie-Mp3
I think it's safe to say that even if POBPAH split tomorrow, people would still be talking about them and listening to their records for years to come. They're not an ordinary band, they're something special, something exciting, something to celebrate. They're the band that, in my opinion, typify everything that's great about indiepop at the moment.

The Fader
Like riding your bicycle to your friends house after you've finished your homework.

Time Out New York
If dreamy, ’80s-sounding indie pop is your thing, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart have your number in a big way. Close your eyes and this local quartet will whisk you away to a magical land of Smiths posters and John Hughes montages.

The Big Takeover
It’s been far too long since I’ve heard a record that’s made such a visceral impression on me as this unassuming, self-released jewel. The Pains’ opening salvo, “This Love is Fucking Right,” immediately jostles the senses with a flurry of jangle–laden riffs that pleasingly drill their way into your cranium, and won’t stop from there. The closest and most direct comparison would be that of the late ’80 Brit indie band Close Lobsters, as well as more recognizable names from the C-86 movement, such as Wedding Present and Mighty Lemon Drops. Even Ride’s first noisy batch of EPs that helped kick off the whole dreampop era weren’t as unremittingly intense and hook-savvy as this beauty. The band’s metronome perfect percussion (a drum machine?) and a full, rich mix abets Pains’ luscious proceedings that much more. I’m already dying to hear more from these New York whiz kids!