There’s nothing about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart that doesn’t scream the 1980s.

The cover depicts two young people looking straight at the camera, and there is no color: flat black and flat white, with no in-between shades to give any detail. If one were told to imagine the stereotypical late-’70s or early-’80s art-school pop-punk album, this image is sure to be it.

And — surprise, surprise — behind this low-fidelity visual lies a low-fidelity pop record.

While the claim sounds both contentious and pretentious, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart demonstrate all that is love through their art and music.

Love can be — as the band name and music suggest — both painful and pure. It can be giddily melodic or indefinably noisy, spoken by an articulate voice or drenched in so much reverb that a language is indecipherable (let alone words), and sometimes the crystal clear rises from behind the distortion to reveal the ambiguously defined concept of complements. Such is this album.

By naming the band and the album The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the musicians set a certain expectation. They are telegraphing exactly who they are to the listener from the beginning, and instead of trying to prove them wrong, they prove to the skeptics that it is OK to be aesthetically and emotionally forward.

“Contender,” the album’s first track, starts off exactly the way you think it should: A trebly guitar strikes a few notes here and there, while a consistently strumming, full-toned, fuzz-boxed guitar leads the way to the predictable (in a good way) first line of the album: “Look what you’ve done.” It builds tension sweetly, and ends shortly.

After less than 3 minutes, one craves the next nine tracks.

“Come Saturday” and “Teenager In Love” sound like they were pulled directly from an Anthony Michael Hall or Molly Ringwald flick, especially with the latter song’s two-chord astronomic and atmospheric keyboards ringing through the cacophony.

“The Tenure Itch” and “Hey Paul” ooze with The Smiths’ jangle-guitar/wailing vocals/heartache combo as lead singer Kip Berman croons lines like, “If it isn’t right, it isn’t him” and “Hey, Paul, where have you gone?/I want to come along.” The album steps out of the ’80s scene and ends appropriately with the My Bloody Valentine-influenced “Gentle Sons,” whose nearly inaudible lyrics seem in symmetry with the triumphant, driving melody.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled debut is a nearly perfect representation of growing up. From reminiscing on early heartbreak and innocence, it winds up warding off the lonely youth for the hopefulness of the future … where we can only wish success upon the band.

Reach the reporter at rponeal@gmail.com.