Kip Berman is in between jobs.
But he doesn’t seem to mind much, as his band, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, is currently riding high.
The other day, he spent time doing laundry, waiting for his roommate to bring home a Galaga video game machine, talking to The World-Herald and preparing for an upcoming tour, which stops at Slowdown tonight.
Berman, POBPAH’s lead singer, is incredibly grateful for the success of his melodic, fuzzy, indie-pop band, mostly due to the amount of attention magazines and newspapers are throwing his way.
After the group released its self-titled album in February, the band found itself in a perfect storm of buzz. The album dropped just in time for the band to build up hype with some critics before performing in March at the giant South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.
After the band’s performance in Austin, critics from all over raved about the group.
POBPAH has been on tour most of the time since, and music writers have compared the band’s dreamy pop to bands such as Jesus & Mary Chain, the Smiths and My Bloody Valentine.
“People usually compare us to bands that are way better than us — generation-defining bands,” Berman said. “We don’t sound as much like the Smiths as (everyone) says, but to get compared to them is really flattering.”
Berman said he grew up listening to “dissonant indie-pop bands.”
“I’d go to hardcore shows in the ’90s that had hard bands that would scream a lot and were more ‘chugga chugga,’ ” he said. “But sometimes bands opening for them were more melodic and focused on emotional issues, relationships and feelings. Those were the bands I was more focused on. I was more into the wussy bands.”
The band’s full-length album came out in February, but members are already releasing a five-song EP, “Higher Than the Stars.” Berman liked making the EP, since it didn’t need a cohesive theme.
“It’s nice to have the ability to explore different aspects of pop music. Not everything has to have a distortion pedal on it to be a good song,” Berman said. “Or does it?”
Contact the writer:
444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com
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