Healing The Pains Of Not Having Enough Pains Interviews To Read

Tonight's the SPEC Fall Concert! We're sure you all read the interviews with the bands from this week's Street, but maybe that wasn't enough. Maybe you want to know what Pains of Being Pure at Heart singer Kip Berman had to say about autumn, football and how much Smashing Pumpkins he's been listening to. Good news: we have outtakes from the interview on those very subjects and so much more!

Street: This is going to be the fall concert - what's your favorite thing about fall?

Kip Berman: Oh my God, it's my favorite season. And my birthday's in the fall. I love football. Birthday, football, changing leaves...I also like sweaters a lot. When fall comes around I can start wearing sweaters again, which is true to my indie pop nature. It could be seen as cliche but it's true. I especially like argyle ones. The World Series is fun, too.

Street: You guys don't seem like a band that would be into sports.

KB: Me and Alex, the bass player, get together and watch football on Sundays. He's a Giants fan and I'm an Eagles fan so whenever they play, I go over to his house. It goes sort of against the expectations of a wussy indie band, but it's something my family's always been into.

Street: Does the band have any big plans for next year?

KB: Well we have the new EP [Higher Than The Stars] out now on Slumberland and then we're going to go on tour in February to Australia and Japan, then do the new album, which we're all really excited about. We toured so much this year - it's definitely a blessing and we appreciate all those opportunities - but we're excited. We learned a lot and want to try new things.

Street: What were some of the new things you learned?

KB: The [first] album doesn't feel very loud. It's nice sounding but it doesn't sound very epic. That sounds very dangerous - "we want to make things epic." But I think the songwriting and the songs should feel a little more emotionally big. I've been listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins and I'm not saying we're like them but there's something about their songs, in the way their instruments sound. We recorded the first album as cheaply as possible so maybe this time we can work out some of the sonic details. I don't want to turn into Brandon Flowers though. "This thing's going to sound like Bruce Springsteen"