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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Fear of Men & Ablebody played Bowery Ballroom (pics)

photos by Amanda Hatfield

“thank you @thepainsofbeing for a wonderful night of tunes and for covering my favorite Katy Perry song” – Sad Girls Guide

“The @thepainsofbeing show was awesome till they covered katy perry…” – Estelle Goodwin

Pains @ Bowery Ballroom – 5/22/14
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

NYC indie pop collective The Pains of Being Pure at Heart just wrapped up their tour with the UK’s Fear of Men (whose Jessica Weiss was playing with Pains on this tour in place of Drew Citron who’s busy with Beverly) and Ablebody (whose Christoph and Anton Hochheim are currently full time members of Pains) in their hometown at Bowery Ballroom last night (5/22). The tour is in support of Pains’ third LP, Days of Abandon, which came out earlier this month via Yebo, and the set included a large amount of that album plus a few faves from the previous two. Days of Abandon is the band’s calmest sounding record, but their new lineup is anything but calm on stage. Pictures of the show are in this post.

Pains also included a cover of Katy Perry‘s “Teenage Dream” in last night’s set (you can hear a clip on Vine). If that sounds like a weird or ironic choice to you, consider earlier this month singer Kip Berman told Billboard:

I love that “pop” can mean a lot of things, but on some level there is something that unites our music with Katy Perry and Beyonce, or Aztec Camera and Orange Juice. To us, we always aspire to be pop without having to explain it in terms of micro-genre. When we started people would always say we were “lo-fi” pop or “dream pop” or “indiepop.” And I get why people say that, but to us what’s most important in our music is pop, not whatever becomes before the hyphen.

The thing that makes music timeless are the qualities that Beyonce, The Ronettes, The Ramones, Blondie or The Pastels share — not the things that differentiate them. Maybe someday we’ll get there and our songs will just exist in the supermarket or The Gap in a matter of fact way — like they just belong there, because that’s where pop songs live.

In other news, speaking of Beverly, during NYC Popfest (though not an official Popfest show), they play an afternoon backyard BBQ show at Trans-Pecos (6/1) with Pam Berry (Glo Worm, Cat’s Miaow, The Shapiros), Mark Monnone (The Lucksmiths) and ’90s Slumberland band Rocketship. Beverly also play a record release show at Baby’s in June.

More pictures from the Pains show below…

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Fear of Men

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart