The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Echo Of Pleasure, 2017

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

Last May, when announcing the new The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart album, The Echo Of Pleasure, Kip Berman (the group's leader, lead singer, and songwriter) also announced the reason for this record being put on hold for a bit. It has been three years since the glorious Days Of Abandon, although the "Hell" single was released in the interim.

It turns out Berman and his wife had had a baby the previous April. "Her name is Viola, named after the instrument that my Grandfather plays," he wrote. "I've been staying home and taking care of her the last year."

The band chose the singles, released via email blasts, according to Berman, because Viola listened to them more than a few times; and they chose the ones she danced to the most.

I mention Berman dancing with Viola because I'm a great fan of dancing around to music you love with your kids. My kids and I had a great time dancing to songs like, most memorably, XTC's "The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead." Some Billy Bragg B-sides ("Heart Like A Wheel" and "Ontario, Quebec and Me") made for a slow dance with their feet on top of mine.

And the songs Viola chose as the singles are prime dancing-around-the-living-room tracks: "Anymore," "When I Dance With You" (of course), and "My Only."

For the band's fourth album, Berman worked again with Days of Abandon producer Andy Savours and was joined by, among others, previous Pains collaborators like vocalist Jen Goma on "So True," who also added wonderful lead vocals to "Kelly" and "Life After Life" on Days Of Abandon, Jacob Danish Sloan on bass, and by Days-alumnus Kelly Pratt on horns.

For the most part, the arrangements on the new album sound more like the band's amazing self-titled debut than the widescreen Belong, which fans feared would send Berman and company to arena stages, and Days Of Abandon, which introduced horns into the mix. The beautiful "Stay," to my ears, is the only song on the new album that makes more than a passing use of horns.

But widescreen mix or horns in the mix, it's the tunes that have always made The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart such an essential listen for pop fans. And Berman also has a great talent for building walls of sound in his songs. And I think many of us can agree that these are the only walls we're interested in building.  The Echo Of Pleasure is full of terrific pop tunes including the title song, "When I Dance With You," "So True," the very new-wavy "Garret," and "The Cure For Death," another dancing-around-the-living-room song; but, with a title like that, certainly not for very young children.

The Echo Of Pleasure is out now on Painbow Records.