While I wait for the new Fuck Buttons album to download and rule my face, let’s experience the new Pains of Being Pure at Heart EP! Whilst I wasn’t a massive fan of their eponymous debut, their game’s stepped right up on the new EP, Higher Than The Stars. They put their fingers in their ears and pretend Love Will Tear Us Apart didn’t really exist on the title track, it’s disco sixteenths and synth line backing the american accent trying to do british accent and coming off like a hamfisted (yet, dreamboaty???) M83 ripoff. While it’s kinda brazen about it’s influences, it pulls off the sweeping dusk dance track effortlessly, dreaming it’s way through 80’s nostalgia, 00’s dance, without a remote hint of 08/09’s ‘bloggaze’. Which is a pretty good step forward for a band who I saw as ‘just another 4AD band’ a few months ago. Still probably not brutal enough for Jay Reatard though.
