Days of Abandon

For now, it just comes off like an unnecessary retreat.

While missing the reverbed recklessness of early Pains tracks like "Come Saturday," Abandon proves leader Kip Berman can mature while maintaining his songs' finer attributes.

It’s a little too smoothed out and indistinct now--most of the songs are well crafted but a little TOO well crafted.

This is power pop at its purest--not doing anything new, granted, but packed full of melodies so thrilling and uplifting that it’s difficult to even begin to give a damn.

The record sounds more deliberately articulated and far less volatile, trading psych gusto for clipped quirk. Horns make their debut with the band. I’m reminded of The New Pornographers at their most chilled.

Days of Abandon lets the songs breathe and ultimately speak for themselves.

On Days of Abandon, the Pains continue to demonstrate why they've been able to find this sweet spot that so many bands strive for.

Despite some inspired guest contributions from A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Jen Goma and Beirut’s Kelly Pratt, the raw guitar anthems from Belong are too often replaced by poppy fizz, toothless jangle and twee melancholia on Abandon.

Days Of Abandon stands up as both a continuation and a reintroduction for this ambitious band. [No. 109, p.59]

What makes everything tick is Berman's plausibly gooey hooks, matched by guitars sparkling like diamante--just the ticket for shiny, happy people. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Expansive, immersive indiepop; how these Pains have grown.

Goma and Pratt help contribute to what is perhaps the most sophisticated sound the Pains of Being Pure at Heart has yet achieved, but there’s something to be said for the immediacy that came with the raw and more spacious feel of the band’s previous albums.

So as good as Abandon is, one can't help but think the more he goes through, the richer and more resonant his music will become.

Ultimately, Days of Abandon is an album that feels like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart are trying to settle into a new sense of what it is as a band, whether that’s because Kip Berman is still continuing to find his voice as a songwriter or because his music sometimes sounds more like its influences than what it once was not so long ago.

This is the third Pains record in a row that has enough memorable songs to play almost like a career-spanning Best Of collection.

In dialing down the pomp of Belong and the fuzz of their debut, the Pains discover something that transcends mere buzz: an ageless indie pop sound that could last them for years to come.

POBPAH's third LP lunges confidently into all the right places, emitting sunshine, glee, rainbows, sugar and sparkles as it goes like a sweaty unicorn running a marathon.

Days Of Abandon’s lushly clean tones provide an innocuous foundation upon which layers of warm harmonies are laid. In the end, the record’s flaws aren’t wholly a product of the mellower genre as much as a generally uninspired execution.

It's sweet, but after a few listens, a little too limp.

Days of Abandon, like everything before it in the Pains catalogue, will win precisely zero prizes for originality, but there’s a vivaciousness permeating every aspect of the record that breathes so much new life into its well-worn touchpoints. Indie pop at its most sparkling.

It is not boring. It is not that good. It is simply meh. The epitomeh of meh.