"APPLAUSE" - The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

I saw The Pains of Being Pure at Heart twice in one day. First, as an audience member on Last Call with Carson Daily at NBC Studios in Burbank, and then, four hours later, at a sold-out show with White Denim at Spaceland in Silver Lake.

Not only were they the band's first performances in Los Angeles, it was lead singer Kip Berman's first time in the city. "The whole experience has been hyper-real to me” his said. “My first day in the city and I'm on television and then playing a sold-out show. I don't know what to say."

Hyper-real, indeed. In Burbank, a bearded man counted down the seconds before the next song amid bright flashes of 'APPLAUSE, 'APPLAUSE'. It was a mixed crowd in Stage 9, most of the audience had never heard of the band but were still eager to clap (on beat) and scream (on camera). The drum solo that breaks the middle of "Everything With You" got more applause than I've heard for some opening bands.

TPOBPAH seemed more in their element playing in the red-hued and comfortable Spaceland later that night. Their performance was messier, the songs given more space to breathe. The sound system wasn't worth more than a condo, perhaps, and there were no studio lights hanging from the ceiling, no bearded man with an 'Applause' sign. But all the band needed to get the crowd "totally pumped up, yeah!" was to say that they were The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, from Brooklyn.

Watching this young band play twice, I got the sense that anyone who has listened to rock music in the past 10 years and thought, "If only this could sound a bit more pleasant," could walk into a TPOBPAH show and fall in love. Maybe it wasn't the camera that was exciting the crowd in Burbank: After every song at Spaceland, the randomly assembled ticket holders—mostly tourists from North Carolina and area locals—didn't need any prompting to cheer. There's nothing more real than that.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog.aspx?dt=04/02/2009