Before putting the digital needle to the first song of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s new album, Days of Abandon (Yebo Music), I was pretty sure of what I would hear. But I was wrong. Instead of the expected of wash of distortion overwhelming giddy vocals, I was greeted by an acoustic guitar and a soft voice singing perfectly intelligible words about a social-climbing lover who’s gone away. That song, “Art Smock,” sets up the 40 minutes of happy songs about loss to come. Like the songs, the title has charming and sharp cross purposes, referring to both wildness and desertion.

Don’t worry, though, that downbeat beginning features the only acoustic sound on the record. The songs that come along after are nothing but guitars and synths and strings, bouncing again and again into lush climaxes. The key word there is bouncing. The Pains have added a chippy backbeat to their toolbox, and it turns up on half the albums’ tracks, pushing the band closer to the popular sounds of Haim and other summer-appropriate indie pop. Track two, “Simple and Sure” is as twee as you can get without going completely limp. But just when “Kelly” gets dangerously close to total pop overload, “Beautiful You” starts up and the band is staring at their shoes again.

For decades, there has been a huge empty space, a chasm, between the work of, say, Hall & Oates and The Cure. Finally, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have found a way to fill it. “Eurydice,” is the perfect midpoint between those two extremes. It’s a fantastic single. The sadness of the song (the key line is “I’ll never stop losing you,”) is as infinite as its titular myth, which involves a song so mournful the deities wept. To sing through their sadness, the Pains pair that animated backbeat with The Cure’s knack for drama, before laying their own saccharine vocalizing over the whole thing and stirring the pot until it overflows. In case that’s not enough, somebody’s cracking voice turns up for just eight measures as the song peaks, adding the sensibility of another pop genius of heartache, Prince, to the mix. It’s the centerpiece of the album and the apotheosis of their new sound. In fact, maybe the album should have ended right there. Short as the record is, I’m wearied by the constant peaks without any valleys. Everything is big and loud and absolute. Even the lyrics are full of eternal emotions never or forever or “until the explosion of the sun.” A break is provided at the end, with “Asp At My Chest,” and by that point it’s much-needed.