Last night brought Brooklyn (no-longer) twee indie poppers The Pains of Being Pure at Heart to St Louis for a stop-over show following their big SXSW trip. With a happily enthusiastic crowd of fans and family members at hand (lead singer Kip Berman’s uncle is from here), the band let off the steam and stress of SXSW and played free and loose to the dancing crowd.
And it was great. I saw the band play here in St Louis at the same venue around three years during the release of their sophomore record Belong, and the growth they have shown in between the three years have been big. Last night, TPOBPAH were a lot more looser, a lot more rockier, a lot more confident ,and a whole lot of fun. The audience ate it up, hooting and hollering by night’s end.
With their third record Days of Abandon coming out next month, the band was able to preview to the crowd some of the tracks off their highly anticipated album in between their older hits. The new songs sound like vintage TPOBPAH, a good balance between the bookish tweeness of their self-titled debut and the big wall of sound of Belong. It definitely made me excited for Days of Abandon.
Virginia band Eternal Summers opened the show. With their similar big wall of sound and crunchy pop-melodic sensibilities, Eternal Summers were the perfect warm-up for the crowd waiting for TPOBPAH.
Check out photos from the show below as well as recordings of TPOBPAH playing two of their new tracks, Simple and Sure and Coral and Gold, embedded below.
Booming Music Scene 