Belong
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
2011
This is probably the right time to talk about the phenomenon of "sophomore slump" in music, right? There's an idea that a band's second album has a hard time living up to their first, for whatever reason—maybe it's because it's tougher to sound fresh, or maybe you have infinite time to create a first album and then only twelve to eighteen months to create a second. This doesn't happen to every band, obviously, but it happens enough that the sophomore slump is something to be feared.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (a band as lovable as their name is unwieldy) do not avoid the sophomore slump. It's really hard to hold it against them, though. Their self-titled debut is just so fucking good, so I can't imagine it was all that painless to create a follow-up. Maybe if Belong existed in a vacuum, I would love it. It's possible.
I do really appreciate the how every song on this album sounds like it has real stakes. Most of these songs could soundtrack the epic climax of some coming-of-age film. This is a good thing. The guitars are loud, and get louder. Belong feels so fucking alive, ya know what I mean? (It was produced by a guy named Flood (yes, his actual name), who has produced such acts as U2, Smashing Pumpkins, the Killers... you see my point.)
But in sounding more polished than its predecessor, it also loses some of the charm that made that self-titled album so fucking special. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sounded like a secret between the band and the audience, or maybe like an inside joke that makes you appreciate the friendship that allows that inside joke to exist in the first place. Belong, in amping up the drama, loses that intimacy. It's cleaner, bigger, takes itself more serious—all things a band's second album usually hopes to achieve—and yet it loses some of that, um, heart that the self-titled has.
If we're talking about "the albums that matter," then this is why Belong matters. It matters because it is the perfect example of the sophomore slump, while also being pretty good in its own right. That's a pretty unlikely scenario, and honestly, it probably speaks more to how much I like the self-titled, that even if the follow-up wasn't quite as good, it's still pretty darn good.
If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "My Terrible Friend"
Stray Observations
- It's actually kind of wild that I made it to the 103rd entry in this column without previously coming across a sophomore slump album. We got close to it, but never landed square. There was At Mount Zoomer, which I guess is technically a sophomore slump, but the band's first album is an all-time classic, so At Mount Zoomer could afford to be worse and still be one of my favorite albums. There was ...And Star Power, which many would argue was a large step down from Foxygen's debut, but I spent my blog post arguing the opposite. And there was American Slang, which, again, I think it better than The '59 Sound, and I actually found out later that this was the Gaslight Anthem's third album—whoops—so it's a moot point.
- This is one of those albums where all the songs are pretty good, but none stand out as the clear-cut "best." Gun to my head, I'd pick "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now."
- I had no idea frontman Kip Berman grew up in Philly... well, okay, most articles say Philadelphia, but I found a couple that clarify that it was "the suburbs of Philadelphia." That tracks for people from the suburbs, to just claim you're from Philly because it's "close enough." I get it. Living in Philly is cool. You wanna be cool.
- ALBUM COVER: No art credits are listed anywhere on the sleeve (the one I parsed through on Discogs, anyway). Not sure if there is much to say otherwise. It's a painting of a child, I guess?
- ALBUM TITLE: Whenever there is an album with a song of the same title, you can never really tell which was named first. Until I see otherwise, I usually assume the song title was the primary. The song "Belong" is actually about not belonging. I would argue that this makes the album title ironic, because Belong sounds like an attempt to "belong" to the music scene, a failed attempt at normal after a truly special and idiosyncratic debut album.
- Apparently during the promotional schedule for Belong, the band tweeted out that they "just turned down a lot of $$,$$$ because we don't want to be in TV ads." 2011 wasn't that long ago, but man, reading shit like this really makes it seem so. In 2020, having your song on a Honda commercial is one of the few ways that bands can actually make money (that and touring, but who know when that revenue stream will become safe again). I probably found all this interesting because just two days ago I was again mentioning that Of Montreal Outback Steakhouse commercial, and how shit's changed so much since the beginning of the '10s.
- In the same Pitchfork interview where they discussed the commercial money, Berman also mentioned his desire to have these songs in TV and movies, so I thought it would be interesting to see if any of the Belong songs were indeed on TV or in movies. There's a website for that. Apparently, "Anne with the E" was featured in the 2012 movie The First Time, and "Heart in Your Heartbreak" was in three different TV shows—Made in Chelsea (never heard of it), Awkward, and the U.K. version of Skins. Nothing prestigious, but it's something, right Kip?
- If you were hoping that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart would recapture the magic of their debut album in any post-Belong releases, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, because I don't think they did. Their most recent, 2017's The Echo of Pleasure, kind of blows, and I deleted it off my iPod this week because I don't really need to be a completionist.
- And if you can believe it, TPoBPaH didn't actually break up until last year. I get it. Trying to make it in the indie rock world's gotta be fucking tough. We'll always have that debut album though.
NEXT TIME: Bend Beyond by Woods
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