ATP Nightmare Before Xmas Curated By MBV: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

We here at Strangeglue do not condone hipsters, but new kids on the block The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have merited their rights to bear skinny jeans and overgrown haircuts with one of the most endearing albums of the year. Live at ATP, we see them thrown out of their New York scene element and onto the completely packed third stage, looking exactly like the stereotypical Williamsburg trash we hope they aren't. They play shyly if not very accurately. Their smart lyrics and zingy chords seem mumbled, small, premature. We are crestfallen, and start to judge them mere posers, with a record whose detached freshness is a lie!

Then, they start warming into the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response they elicit from people who seem none too trendy, and it dawns upon us: TPoBPaH work so well in this setting because there is none of the self-loathing that infests the scene out of which they come. To the ATP set, they're a bunch of adorably scruffy kids with catchy tunes and cool t-shirts. We despise most in others what we see in ourselves, and perhaps this reviewer has spent too many nights nursing PBR tall boys in Brooklyn's third most ironic bar to come into this one neutral. 

By the end of the set, even we start seeing their awkward stage presence as a welcome reminder of why we love New York. Irony is honesty, and honesty irony. TPoBPaH end up inviting the entire at-capacity venue back to their chalet for a party, claiming to even have seven or eight beers to offer. We don't take them up on it this time, but we'd love to meet up with them for a craft ale back in Brooklyn soon.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart In Photos

Photos: Tom Moriarty