The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than Stars EP (2009) [Slumberland] // Grade: A

Oh to be sixteen again, to trip over your heart and fall in love so hard you can barely move, crying as often as you’re smiling. It’s been a very long time since I was sixteen, but the music of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart take me back to my teenage years with such realness that I’m not reminiscing, but reliving.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s newest EP, Higher Than The Stars, picks up where their self-titled debut left off, with the band continuing to channel every single act that defined my teenage years. Like their album, Higher Than The Stars doesn’t do anything that bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Cure weren’t doing 15+ years ago, but it’s their ability to pull off combining the influence of so many esteemed bands without sounding tacky that makes their music so intensely connective. When you listen to the music of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart you know they shared tears at sixteen to the same soundtrack, shared smiles at seventeen over the same live shows. Higher Than The Stars sees the band continuing to solidify a sound that really is a rip of postpunk, twee, shoegaze and indie pop’s past, but executed so authentically you just shrug it off, grin and continue singing along.

Higher Than The Stars features four new tracks from the band and a remix of the title track from Saint Etienne. Every track on the EP is just as great as the next. The title track is a hazy vocaled, dreamy standout, wrapping drowsy melody in twinkling synths. The most upbeat of the EP’s selections, “103″, consistently brings to mind one of my favorite tracks from my teenage years, Sleeper’s “Statuesque”. Guitar-heavy and more sophisticated than the other three tracks on the EP, “Twins” is likely to be a favorite for many listeners, but it’s the least polished of the release’s offerings, the slumberous, starry-eyed lover’s lullaby, “Falling Over” that tugs my heartstrings to their breaking point.

It’s odd to feel that a band that so directly replicates the sound of a specific era of music’s past is creating something important, authentic and memorable, but that’s how I feel about the music of  The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

- Scrooge McFuck