Recap The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Orpheum Stage Door

When Brooklyn dream-popsters The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart kicked off their set at the Orpheum Stage Door on Wednesday with the sugary hooks of “This Love Is Fucking Right!,” The A.V. Club couldn’t help but stare at the dozens of excitedly bobbing heads in attendance and wonder: How many of these people are aware that behind Kip Berman’s breathy melody and 1,000-yard stare, he’s actually singing about a guy in an incestuous relationship with his little sister? Oddly enough, the way Berman slips razors into the cookie jar—touching on odd sexual themes, drug use, and depression—gives The Pains’ songs their character. As a semi-researched '80s pop dork, this writer's not sure whether to respect The Pains' immaculate sensibility, or be infuriated with them for taking unforgivably massive shark-bites out of My Bloody Valentine, The Pastels, and The Cure.

Despite our whining, The Pains’ live set stayed remarkably faithful to the sounds of their recent self-titled album. Peggy Wang-East had no trouble coloring in songs like the deceptively bouncy “A Teenager In Love” (the main repeated hook is “You lived your final days / a teenager in love with Christ and heroin") with shimmering melodies, while nailing all of her essential harmonies with Berman on the infectious “Come Saturday.” While Berman also handled guitar duties, Pains enlisted the help of guitarist Christoph Hoccheim of The Depreciation Guild (the main project of Pains drummer Kurt Feldman, which played an impressive, if similarly frustrating, set earlier that evening) to round out the noisy bubble.

While the audience comprised (mostly) stationary young folks, it should be noted that there was an older gentleman in an oversized white T-shirt and hot shorts who enthusiastically danced and hopped all over the floor in his tubesocks.

For most of the Pains' set, one song ran right into another and the band’s somewhat stonewall demeanor seemed to follow its music in from the '80s goth-pop scene. That is, until Berman broke the illusion with some surprising stage banter. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I was actually born in Madison,” Berman stated. “My dad and my uncle are here, so if you are going to boo, wait until they leave.” Berman further jammed the crowd’s too-cool-for-school circuits by declaring his excitement for seeing Aaron Rodgers in the upcoming Packers season. “I think we could go all the way this year,” Berman said in earnest. After The Pains’ wrapped up their main set, they came back out and played album-closer "Gentle Sons," which takes an obnoxiously obvious chomp out of Jesus And Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.” Still, beneath the massive pile of borrowed hooks is a witty and able songwriting team that uses its parts wisely.

An opening set from psychedelic folk-rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars was a disaster plagued with simply awful sound. Joseph D’Agostino’s shaky vocals and screeching guitar farted and fed back through the P.A. system, while the sound guy took all too long to get the ear-slaying mix right. Meanwhile, the band did its best to deal with a poor sound situation, ripping through a handful of songs from its excellent debut Why There Are Mountains.