Check the tuneage: http://tinyurl.com/bjwa8c

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart Exclusive interview with Evan Chase

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are really, really great. Groove is in their indie shoegaze-y art, to be certain. I had the chance to sit down with Peggy, Kip and Alex at Schubas in Chicago two nights ago during their 9-city US tour and found them to be much like their music: earnest, articulate, and right-on indie-minded people.

Here’s what they had to say about their rave Pitchforkmedia.com review, the joys of creativity, where they got their amazing band name and new 7″, Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan.

On The Pitchforkmedia.com review http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/148850-the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart-the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart

Kip: It was a wonderful thing. I think the things that still matter in the Internet Age, touring and playing for people and putting on a good show—all the things that seem 100% oldschool. I think that’s a good thing; it makes bands work for their dinner. You have to earn people’s acceptance— it’s not just handed to you.

Peggy: It’s cool to receive accolades from the indie community. I think a lot of people heard us for the first time after reading the Pitchfork review.

Where The Pains of Being Pure of Heart Name Came From

Kip: A friend wrote a children’s story called The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and its moral, as all children’s stories have morals, that the time you spend when you’re young traveling with friends and the friendships that you forge at that time of your life are really to be valued and celebrated. It’s a nice way of thinking about our band—we’re all friends and young and we have these adventures getting to go places and play music together. It’s a pretty fitting name. The phrase feels really right.

Artistic intentions/Comparisons to My Bloody Valentine and The Smiths

Kip: It’s always flattering when people draw comparisons to our music to such incredible artists as Morrissey or My Bloody Valentine, but our music is more about us and a natural outgrowth of who we are as people and who we are when we plug in our instruments and play that’s us. We have a huge respect for a huge canon of music through the past, but we’re pretty happy being The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. If people want to draw comparisons to bands that are a lot better than us, that’s fine, but we’re happy to be our own world.

On The Pains of Being Pure At Heart cd

Kip: We wanted to capture that and document that so these songs lived in a permanent way. To have that final product sound like and not be something we’re not. It was a very natural-sounding record.

The Pains of Composition

Alex: Kip writes the songs and brings them to everyone.

Kip: Behind every great writer is a great editor. I think creativity is over-valued in our society. Being creative is a wonderful thing, but being able to pick-and-choose is really important. If it was just me there’d probably be thirty songs on the album and twenty wouldn’t be that good. (laughs)

Peggy: We also get a lot of ideas from just hanging out. Inside jokes and stuff. Like Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan.

Inspiration for Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan 7” single

Kip: All of our experiences and our friends’ experiences, they’re (the songs) very much about our collective experiences, shared experiences. The title’s almost a reference to what the song sounds like. The song sounds a lot like the Vaselines. My introduction to The Vaselines was through Nirvana’s covering of them and Kurt Cobain’s championing of these smaller indie-pop bands that would’ve never gotten mainstream of any attention in the U.S. He took the time to use his celebrity to further other bands and offer listenership. The song isn’t about Kurt ,but the song wouldn’t have existed were it not for Kurt Cobain.

the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart_07_everything-with-you

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart

[wpvideo DVXXT1Dg]Nice one on the Merge Records package that dropped in my mailbox today on the heels of last night’s righteous High Places live experience at SF’s uber-indie club, Bottom of the Hill (see previous post below.) Vol. 1 is curated by Peter Buck so you know it’s money. No liner notes though, hmm is Buck just too cool or too busy? No matter as some of my Merge favorites are in full effect on this first of 12 discs. I’m working/But I’m not working for you/Alright? Ya slack motherfucker….yes it’s true. Happy to work for anytime, Mac. Say the word & I shall be healed.

SCORE! Vol. 1 Tracklist highlights:

Slack Motherfucker- Superchunk

Requiem –M Ward

Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft- Robert Pollard

Sour Shores- Portastatic

Freak Scene –Dinosaur Jr.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY2wvoa4fA]
True to the hype, High Places are great. The only ‘mistake’ they made was in having a band who kinda-sorta sounds like them open, a two-piece heavy on effects and bass who were also interesting in an annoying kind of way. (Turned out it was their first-ever gig.) Couldn’t tell you any of the names of the songs, but I did recognize one or two from repeated listens to High Places eponymous first-cd on Thrill Jockey. The guy, Rob, makes all kinds of crazy percussive sounds with his drumsticks on electronic pads and they make live samples onstage which is cool as fuck as well.

Still I can’t help but feel a little goes a long way with these guys. Far-away vocals (read: you never really know what Mary Pearson’s saying in that sweet-ass bubblegum candy lilting way of hers, nor do you much care.) Somehow reminiscent of other greats like Cocteau Twins in their day, you just close your eyes and float away. Set adrift on memory bliss, indeed.

Note: High Places now live in LA, not Brooklyn, NY.

A taste of High Places from 2008’s self-titled cd:

01-the-storm

http://www.myspace.com/hellohighplaces

new church album(straight from the panthers mouth)

Original post at THE TIME BEING, Kilbey’s bloggy:

http://stevekilbey.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-church-albumstraight-from-panthers.html

Touching From A Distance is a tremendous gift to Joy Division fans and anyone else who might care about the star-making machine and its human toll. 

This book is captivating as all hell, a peek behind the veil into who Ian Curtis was in his homelife, in addition to being just the guy who wrote Unknown Pleasures. After all, Deborah Curtis has an innate understanding of the man as she saw the madness closest-at-hand.

The early chapters concern, inevitably, the formative years of Ian and his future bandmates in New Order and Joy Division, respectively to their later larger fame. Ian was obsessed, as so many young men of that era, with Iggy and Bowie. Ms. Curtis does a fantastic job of letting us see how they came to be a married couple with a new child by the early age of 21 and the sad, tragic effect this had on a rising star in the shameless rock business. Ian wouldn’t live to see 24.

What’s most stunning here is that Deb Curtis seems to have inherited, inhabited even parts of Ian’s reality and hallow-graphically, rather than hagiographically, represented the many attributes of Ian’s poetic gifts and stunning sensitivity and window into the human condition. In point of fact, she proves herself equally gifted. God bless Ms. Curtis for what she endured in losing Ian and having her family shattered, and her return to her better senses and the legacy of inheritor/benefactor to her fair share of Joy Division’s not inconsiderable fortune. Lord knows she deserves all this and more for all she’s been through.  My hat is off to her. Run, don’t walk to Barnes & Noble or your computer for excerpts.

Here I am the Game Warden of Love

Bein’ bored & calm &….sometimes so-ber

Lowery’s still dead on it. No big surpriser there, though. The fellas were in fine fettle this Christmas-y eve, rocking out the goodjams for the true believers. We was treated to a righteous Dead cover & I Ride My Bike from that seriously oldschool ep I kept tucked away in my Dad’s dresser. Effortlessly brilliant in an off-hand kinda way, a bearded DL sporting a new Argyle sweater and smart-ass Buddy Holly glasses. The cops outside had no idea what they missed.

Loser (Dead cover)

I See The Light

One Fine Day

Gimme One More Chance

Low

I Ride My Bike

Cracker/Camper Van jam

Oh, here:

08-wheels-keep-spinning

11-when-i-win-the-lottery-live

Way To Blue- Nick Drake

This is the record originally referred to as “cocktail music for people who have ceased to give a fuck”)

Muswell Hillbillies, Village Green Pres. Society- The Kinks
(If 20th Century Man alone doesn’t make you want to set fire to yours or your parents’ home, chances are you’re already dead.)

Warner Greatest Hits- The Faces (speaks for itself)
All for Nothing/Nothing for all- Replacements (ditto)
Debt & Departure- Those Bastard Souls (From the opening chords & crescendo of “The Last Thing I Ever Wanted Was To Show Up & Blow Your Mind” Shouse’s got us fellow suburban refuge/suferrees right where he wants us, & to though I was stone bleeding sober when this record came out, I knew it wasn’t going to be long before I’d need to be high to appreciate this gem properly. And boy have I!)

Flying Burrito Brothers- Farther Along (excerpt: “You said you loved me/ Then you stole my clothes/ I loved you baby/But that’s the way that it goes…” If you’ve been snoozing on this one like I was until a best friend ruined me with “The Dark End of The Street” two summers ago, r-u-n run run your skinny little ass on down to the record store & like me, grab the copy some junkie sold back for a bag, the only reasonable excuse for any cameo of Graham Parsons in a used bin other than the obvious, brain damage or a penchant for fuckin’ Bryan Adams. Don’t get me started.)

Grace- Jeff Buckley (If his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelulah” isn’t the closest thing to aural orgasm I’ve had in years, his original “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” usually puts me over the edge. Missed the boat on this one too for three years, then lost my mind one night when I heard “Last Goodbye” on some crappy Boston radio. He will always be missed.)

Definitely Maybe- Oasis (Truth be told, makes me want to start drinkin’/getting’ high again. Oh well, thanks lads for when you didn’t suck.)
Modern Lovers- eponymous (excerpt: “I don’t want some cocaine sniffing triumph in a bar/ I don’t wanna triumph in a car/ I want someone I can care about…./or NOTHING!!!” Just get it already!!!)

“The Universal”- Blur (almost cry to this tune it’s soooo good)
“Into My Arms”- Nick Cave (ditto)
“Brandy & Curls”- Creeper Lagoon (sounds like Pavement meets Replacements, kinda, but you kinda can’t lose)
Terror Twilight- Pavement (Uh, you’re either on the bus or you’re off it by now, Kids.)
“Partner For Life”, “Temporary Beauty”, “The Three Martini Lunch”, “Haunted Episodes”, “Don’t Bother With The Local Girls)”, “I Want You Back”, etc.- Graham Parker A musician who’s not to missed, simply. A poor man’s Elvis Costello if you will, but that’s just not fair to such a fine fartiste.

Songs of Love & Hate- Leonard Cohen (My friend Kim’s got my copy which is probably for the best because “Avalanche” slays me from the giddyup. Least I got her

Lyle Lovett with “Simple Song.” Eh heh.
Greatest Hits 1 & 2- Lenny Cohen

A girl I was trying to shag in Cambridge, let’s call her “Amy”, borrowed 2 & never gave it back. Worth it for “Everybody Knows” alone, but there’s like 8 other killers. 1’s with my ex, so there’s no chance she’s ever surrendering that artifact, along with my copy of Beth Orton’s “Central Reservation”, perhaps the most exquisite musical artifact to appear all year.

Summer Teeth, A.M.- Wilco  Not sure I would’ve made it without ‘em. God bless Jeff.