The Pains of Being Pure At Heart...

...This was a name that one member of the band suggested, and to which all other members of the band agreed. How did that go down, I wonder?

BAND MEMBER ONE: "How 'bout we call ourselves The Pains of Being Pure At Heart?"

EVERYONE ELSE: "Fine, but can we get back to our Franny and Zooey book club? Also, you said you were going to help us study for our GREs so we could get into Library Science grad school."

Ah, it's fun to laugh at twee music. And yet, it may be twee music that gets the final laugh. This is a genre that, like the blues, has shown remarkable staying power (almost three decades and counting for TM) without any real sonic or textural innovation in the medium. The stuff you hear now is, by and large, the stuff you would have heard in the genre's infancy. The chord structures, lyrical contents, deliveries, production values, arrangements...there's been precious little variation throughout the years.

Similarly, there hasn't seemed to be much variation in the demographic identifiers of the genre's adherents. Like a Led Zeppelin fan, who has always been and always will be the dude with ripped jeans, long hair, and a "Zoso" shirt, the fan of twee music will keep the glasses manufacturers, Beat Poetry publishers, knitting supply stores, and vintage bicycle dealers afloat from now until the end of time. The awkward kid stammering about Belle and Sebastian in the 90s could have been the awkward kid stammering about Field Mice in the 80s, who in turn could have been the awkward blogger stammering about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart right now.

And yet...yet...this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The level of innovation doesn't equate to quality or resonance. Perhaps you remember how most people lost their fool minds for Amy Winehouse? Or, alternately, how I was fawning over Human Highway for reminding me of mid-90s slacker rock? Aquarium Drunkard has a nice post on this band, the tenor of which is "Well, yes, they do sound like stuff that's come before, but they do it well. Oh, and the music is fun and good."

Frankly, I give this band a solid "meh" at first blush. I love stuff in this vein, and will thus give the tracks a few more listens. However, I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am that these guys are the buzz band of February 6th, 2009. What genre, I wonder, is not ripe for a comeback?

That said, I have to get over to my early-90s-R&B-revival band practice. Has anyone seen my linen suit?

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Stay Alive
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction

For Comparison:

The Field Mice - Emma's House
Belle & Sebastian - Judy and the Dream of Horses