Days of Abandon: Shimmering Sounds Tinged with Sad Mopery
5 stars
In their third album, Days of Abandon, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart almost ditched their last album’s heart bursting intensity. Frontman Kip Berman, once a starry-eyed “heart on his sleeve” daydreamer serenading anyone in earshot, now sounds like a young romantic who has seen his share of heartbreaks & the pains of unrequited love. The tracks on the album aren’t about head-spinning, chest-swelling love anymore but now have more complexities, complications and none of the naivety previously seen. The band aren’t clamouring for arena-rock status, they’re just happy making good music which shows in the bookish & fuzzy aesthetic of the album.
Moving away from the bouncy ballad young love found on their previous album Belong, Days of Abandon is subtler and more graceful. The first song on the album, ‘Art Smock’ might just be the most delicate song on the album but more tellingly, it’s easily the most nostalgic as well; a sweet-and-sour remembrance of a relationship-that-wasn’t. The lyrics are sensitive & sublime, and the hook hits devastatingly close to home but still feels tender: “Should have guessed it was going to fall/To pieces in my hands again”. From the very first notes, ‘Art Smock’ feels more reflective and wistful. It’s a look at the present through the lens of the past, in which Berman allows a lived-in experience step in and take over resulting in untampered passion. The next song ‘Simple and Sure’ is bursting with breezy and tight arrangements, meditative melodies, and beautifully poignant lyricism, making it a simultaneously boyish and mature exploration of love, longing and everything in-between. ‘Life After Life’ lyrics: “The flowers he gave me have wilted/ But I keep them, like I keep him” tell us that not all love lasts forever and most dries up like flowers in a vase—but with every heartbreak comes a well-earned lesson, a souvenir to keep until the next one comes along.
The next tracks ‘Coral & Gold’, ‘Beautiful You’, ‘Masokissed’ and ‘Until the Sun Explodes’ all feel like they have some sort of wrinkles—anxious memories, telling recollections, none-too-idyllic scenes from the past—which are all over Abandon. Berman’s certainly turned in sweeter, more rousing sets, but he’s never written anything that feels quite so true to life.
On the first contact, Abandon can come across as muted and brittle but musically, Abandon is the fizziest Pains record yet: say goodbye to the plumes of distortion, and instead, the album greets you with records full of a crisp, effervescent gallop, that splits its time between dreamy balladry and spotless indie-pop. Days of Abandon is the sound of a young man in flux, with Berman’s calling it his most personal work yet, and you can sense that he has applied his life lessons to the music from writing about all the tiny victories & painful heartbreaks that come from being young & in love.
