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May 10, 2011This only falls flat when you want more - and that aside, Belong really is a good album.
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Apr 15, 2011The 10-track set barely has a weak moment and actually ends too soon. It's like '90s alt-rock had a child who suddenly grew up beautiful.
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Apr 12, 2011Their last album was a solid shoegazing experience, but here, there's just something special about the progression of their songwriting and pop instrumentation that feels just right and the band seems to be comfortable with their own music, like they finally seem to belong.
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Apr 5, 2011The transition is subtle - the reconstituted tracks of Belong remain vehicles for near-perfect pop melodies, gentle self-deprecation, and wistful sentiments
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Apr 5, 2011Put simply, The Pains...are a pop band with songs about young love and teenage misadventure.
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Apr 1, 2011After all, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart never promised reinvention, and Belong is another solid soundtrack to summer afternoons lounging on bedspreads, making collages, flashing back to one's own days as a teenage outcast-however far in the past they may be.
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Apr 1, 2011Belong is a bigger, bolder, and brighter follow-up that adds new dimensions to the Pains' sound while nearly equaling the songwriting of their debut.
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Mar 29, 2011More than anything, Belong shows ambition, with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart clearly aiming for something bigger--a bigger sound, maybe a bigger audience. It nailed the sound part. A larger audience seems inevitable.
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Mar 29, 2011Not so much Teenage Fanclub as 'Loveless'-era MBV meets classic Cure at their poppiest.
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Mar 29, 2011Berman and his bandmates also play more purposefully here than they did on their debut, as though the bigger arrangements finally provided the shy-guy contrast they'd been looking for. Their move toward muscle feels genuine.
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Mar 29, 2011Its sound is now massive enough to match its big-hearted emotion.
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Mar 28, 2011Really, they show a lot on Belong -- that they can take their sound to the next level, that they haven't lost any of their good-natured band-next-door charm, and most of all, that they can make a great-sounding modern rock album without selling their souls.
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Mar 28, 2011When it comes down to it, though, I can look at the track list and sing you back the most important lyric in any song. If pop music is meant to create a shared experience, consider this album a success on a whole bunch of levels.
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Mar 28, 2011Despite the heartbreak overtones, Belong is not a depressing or down-tempo album. It remains upbeat and concludes in a manner that ties up the loose ends of the story, all while raiding your new-wave album collection for inspiration.
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Mar 28, 2011It's an irresistible confection, a document of cherry-flavoured kisses, of social inadequacy, of general brow-beaten oddities captured in the most wide-eyed romantic monologue this side of a teenage Tumblog.
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Mar 28, 2011Generally speaking, everything about Belong is shiner and more romantic than the last album; if The Pains of Being Pure at Heart depicted an eternal Saturday in the lives of a few sensitive American teenagers, Belong catches those same kids dolled up for a perpetual prom night.
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Mar 25, 2011For Belong, they step up in class with producers Flood and Alan Moulder, who have overseen alt-classics from Depeche Mode's Violator to PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love.
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Mar 25, 2011A consistent second album of big choruses from the New Yorkers.
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Mar 25, 2011They definitely sound like more of a band now, merging their despairing lyrics and indie pop demeanor with an alternative grunge that's certainly worthy of praise, perhaps even more now than ever before.
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MojoMay 18, 2011This is an album that stands up to the touchstone indie classics it references. [May 2011, p.112]
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Entertainment WeeklyApr 8, 2011The Brooklyn noise-pop fetishists are finally crafting songs substantial enough to withstand repeated listens and justify their devotion to guileless twee. [8 Apr 2011, p.59]
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Alternative PressMar 29, 2011Polished studio effects notwithstanding, Belong's truest charms remain the songs themselves. [Apr 2011, p.115]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 21 out of 24
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Mixed: 3 out of 24
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Negative: 0 out of 24
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Jun 10, 2012
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Mar 14, 2012
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May 10, 2011