The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have always worn their influences on
their unashamedly fuzzy-pop sleeve. On this 7” single they pay tribute to a favourite: The Magnetic Fields. Recorded in June at Rare
Book Room alongside the B-side, a cover of East River Pipe's My Life Is Wrong, it serves as something of a stopgap release to both coincide with
their current European tour and to give their fans something new(ish) to listen
to before their next album is eventually released. It’s also going to be
released on an undoubtedly lovely, limited edition olive green vinyl and
therefore become something of a collector’s item. But enough about the
abstract, let us get to the concrete.
The Pains’ cover of Jeremy
manages to both invoke the essence of The Magnetic Fields’ original whilst
retaining the sound we’ve come to expect from them. If you compare the lyrics
on this track to most of the songs on Belong
then you can see one of the areas in which The Magnetic Fields have most
heavily influenced The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Yet where the original veered
between twee and saccharine, this version sounds more fleshed out. Driven
primarily by the rhythm section of Alex Naidus and Kurt Feldmen, the vocals of
Kip Berman and Peggy Wang complement each other, meaning that the male/female
dynamic of the original is retained whilst being given a fresh twist. It’s not
a case of taking a good thing and making it better as The Pains have clearly
taken great care to be respectful of the original whilst putting their own mark
on it. Jeremy will appeal to fans of
both bands although not equally. It could even be argued that a certain
innocence found in the original version is lost in the more muscular,
rock-oriented cover. Yet this is splitting hairs and if the single gets more
fans of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart listening to The Magnetic Fields and
maybe falling in love with them then it will have done its job. The fact that
it’s a cracking cover is just a bonus.
Jeremy by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is
currently available as a digital download and will be released on limited
edition olive-green vinyl 7” on 29th October via Play It Again Sam.
LD
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