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April 25, 2008
Indie Pop: Short and Bittersweet
the Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Kurt Cobain's Cardigan"
"I'll take 'Things that would make me indescribably sad if I saw them in a Hard Rock Cafe in Tucson' for a thousand Alex." The fey New York City sounds of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's latest single don't seem to have much of a concrete connection to the famous fuzzy in Courtney Love's footlocker. If we want to try extra hard to make a connection though, the occasionally strident beat and subtly noise-speckled guitar does bear a bit of resemblance to Cobain's Scottish favorites, the Vaselines. The vocals aren't as giddy or as odd as that, but Kip and Peggy (indie pop vocalists should always be referred to in the familiar don't you know?) have an adorably defeated quality to them. It's as if they've prematurely cracked the secrets of Kurt's Leonard Cohen afterworld, and are already sighing eternally. Perpetually, at the very least.
the Capstan Shafts - "(I Dream About You Because) You Have Such Low Standards"
If posts were to be drafted every time lo-fi workhorse Dean Wells hatched some new material, we'd have a new weekly feature. The extremely prolific Vermont home-recorder's 8th release since 2007 (you read that right) is a 12-track EP cryptically called Miles Per Famine. The EP designation is excusable given the writer's extreme brevity. There's only a minute and eight seconds of diminished expectations here. Even Wells' daydreams are contingent on a girl with poor self esteem it seems. But as always, the charm in his broken hearted sing-alongs come from his melodic interpretation of sharp words that carry more lascivious intent they they initially appear to. "If I take your hand, and then some..." he yells, as the camera pans to the roaring fire.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at April 25, 2008 12:00 AM
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