THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART Belong (2011 UK 10-track CD album - On the heels of their debut eponymous album, released in 2009, Brooklyn quartet The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have rightfully earned themselves a reputation as masters of the peerless pop song, crafting tender, melancholy gems which shimmered and sighed with the wistful promise of new love, casting a spell over listeners and critics alike. For this, their second album, The Pains... have recruited the services of what, on the surface of it, seems like two unlikely conspirators, in the form of master producer Flood and renowned mixer Alan Moulder. Having worked with the legendary likes of My Bloody Valentine, U2, Smashing Pumpkins and PJ Harvey [to name but a few] between them, they have opened up the band's beautifully self-contained sound and made it vast and magnificent, banishing once and for all any associations to 'lo-fi' and bringing it into heretofore unmapped widescreen dimensions. Everything seems more vivid, more lush and spacious now; the emotion heightened, more potent. Includes the single 'Heart In Your Heartbreak', with its handclaps, infectious chorus and late-breaking synth stabs, sounding like the very essence of bittersweet romance)