PURCHASE | LISTEN

It’s gloomy days like this in Northern, NJ where not only does your car get a cheap wash from all of the rain, but your head can also get a complete flush-out if you listen to the right music. The Higher Than The Stars EP by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart leaves you in a daze, filling up the room in a wall-of-sound distortion with influences ranging from The Jesus & Mary Chain to My Bloody Valentine. It soothes, it lowers stress levels and sort of makes you want to take a nap. Perfect rainy day music.

EDIT: I also like this EP because the artwork matches our website…

See Superchunk live:
04.15.2009 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
04.18.2009 – Indio, CA @ Coachella

DOWNLOAD: “Misfits & Mistakes” – Superchunk

When we began the process of remaking these Sleep Station songs, Flight One seemed too hard a nut for us to crack. Essentially, we started each track of the EP by taking snippets of acoustic guitar and the tempo from these Sleep Stations songs and branching them out into hip hop inspired tangents – both lyrically and sonically.

Thankfully, Gavin was able to do a smooth job of cutting apart the one area of the song we could add a credible beat to – the very beginning. With that small loop, Gav put in a sparse atmospheric beat along with tiny shreds of the rest of the song and looped it so I could get a sense of the tempo and downbeat I’d be writing for and start arranging a chorus.

The album Hang In There Charlie is about two astronauts in the mid 70′s on a secret mission who protest the conditions of the space station, and are subsequently left to die in space. Eventually, NASA relents and lets one pilot go home, the other must die alone.

I thought Flight One was about the end of the training process and launch of our experimental 1970s space astronauts. What the pilots seem to be saying is ‘what’s done is done, no more time for introspection, and if this immoral mission takes us to outer space, we may as well embrace being one of the few who will ever have that honor.’ “For 20 years we have gambled/ this time we have won.” Debiak sings, “are we too precious to think twice? too precious to think right?” But its too late for second guessing. “Now we’re okay/ the stars are my friends.” Here is the tangent I wrote for it.

It’s outer space man/ got me beggin for breaks man/ liftoff today man/ crash land like bam/ train till ya break – ex-army base/ ‘It ain’t safe’/ that kind of paper?/ ‘blast off, I’ll see ya later’/ Keep a secret from the Feds and from the Soviets/ I didn’t tell my best friends cause I know its a test/ If for the rest of my life I keep this curse inside/ to see the earth fly by?/ almost worth the time/

Flight One – Your dream man, outer space
Flight Two – Fuck a mission, do whatever it takes.                                                         Flight Three – Believe if you blink it’s gone, and If you ever wanna fly, baby sing this song.

We made it/ but conditions was cold and degraded/ souls of the faithless/ but how could I break it?/You know it’s wrong/ This is a prison – hate the merciless throng/ Toke the bong in the hall – is that relief for us all?/ It’s not enough for me/ ethically broke emcees might reject his plea/ but this place is diseased/ if you believe that he breathes/Pleased if he bleeds?/ Imma tell it to the world – How could ya stop this, G?

After some contentious arguments about rhyme patterns and pacing, per a good rapper – producer relationship, Gavin saw fit to hop on his keyboard and record the loops that define this remix. We knew this would be the first track, so from its introduction it had to tell you it was catchy, and that this is a long story. Hence the ambient, but subtly terrifying greeting welcome to outer space that kicks around in the opening seconds.

Helping give the song an understated majestic twinge is a little piece of the background atmospherics of the original song, which can be heard following each loop of Dave’s guitar (listen closely to the intro in Flight One) and additional synth work on our end by Gavin Werner.

Hope you enjoy, we called it Welcome to Outer Space: Flight Two

What music lover doesn’t appreciate a perfectly appropriate album title?

Stars’ latest EP, Sad Robots is laced with beautifully arranged digital noise that sound like the whale cries of the robotic depressed. Oddly enough, that’s a compliment.

The six track digital release is anchored by slick piano melodies that form the foundation of a warmly-produced extended play that could have been the soundtrack to Tom Cruise’s Vanilla Sky.

The music really begins with the second track, “A Thread Cut With A Carving Knife.” Here, the earnest, melodic voices of the Canadian 5-piece pop outfit begin their glide over often distracting and often brilliantly arranged sound effects, including heavy computerized bass. Each track is accented by bright, static-y notes that rise above a fog that clears as each verse progresses.

Following a third track, “Undertow” that seems a step-by-step handbook to how awesome Stars can be, they send you to the fourth track, “Going, Going, gone,” which was recorded live. It features haunting vocal interplay backed by dark, heavy keyboarding that lets up only after you’ve been suffocated a bit.

Let’s face it, there are plenty of bands who show proficiency with the synthesizer, frequently employ heavy vocal filters and can hold a note, but precious few have anything interesting to say. Nobody is looking for some poetic incarnation of the Drake equation, but catching a certain mood can be an equally fulfilling intellectual journey. And this is an awesome mood.

In the fifth track, “14 Forever” Stars sings, “The revolution starts in a sea of paper cuts/ You look behind us when you cheer for someone else/ I’m the only lover you can keep up on the shelf,” as part of another back and forth with Amy Millan’s innocent vocals reminiscent of the best and worst parts of high school love: “I remember on the sidewalk as I dived into the hills/ You singing on the sidewalk as I told him that I will/ that song again the alleyway takes me to my door/ I’ll be back for more.”

Poetry that leaves you something to think about is 80% of replay value – too bad much of it is obscured in this EP by overbearing filters. It’s a common syndrome amongst indie bands: You’ve got a beautiful voice, so turn town the reverb a couple notches.

Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a collection of catchy beats topped by well-layered sonic experimentation and pitch-perfect harmonies, Stars’ Sad Robots EP is worth a buy.

$4 BUY IT HERE | VISIT THEIR MYSPACE

So Great Northern has released an EP on Eenie Meenie records titled “Sleepy Eepee”. It’s worth your ears. Buy it at iTunes right now. Also check out the other releases on EM, son.