HEARTCORE

Do you miss high school? Well, then, we deeply envy the breadth of your selective memory. Yet if the emotional turmoil of our education had been like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s second album, Belong, we would’ve never left it: A genuinely heartfelt psych-rock disc reminiscent of the Smashing Pumpkins and the best fuzz-friendly power-pop of the decade, it’s a record without agenda or irony, simple in its devotion with beautiful, thick melodies. The local group’s sweet anthems (especially killer love-in “Even in Dreams”) have no meta calculations: they just cut straight to the core. So, that band moniker does make sense, after all.

Fri., May 6, 6 p.m., 2011