The Pains of Being Pure at Heart @ Thekla, Bristol (30/11/2009)

My second gig in as many days, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart didn’t really stack up as a worthy successor to The Antlers. I love them on record, unquestionably so, but live they haven’t got it quite stacked up right. The live mix is all wrong with much of the brilliance of the music being lost below a kind of overblown muddiness.

At least this time (as opposed to the first time I saw them) they played Stay Alive. I know it’s hardly there best song, yet I adore it, for almost no reason at all.