Actions speak louder than words, and one picture is worth a 1,000 of them. On The Echo Of Pleasure, his fourth album with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, bandleader Kip Berman admits to not always having the right words and decides to instead communicate with his emotion.

Berman, already known as an emotional songwriter for songs like “Young Adult Friction” and “Heart in Your Heartbreak,” was likely bursting at the seams. He recorded while his wife was six months pregnant. Faced with a shortened time to complete the album, contemplating whether this might be his last opportunity to tour for several years, he felt love… and fear.

“Love is big—sometimes it’s emphatic, overwhelming or simple—other times it’s tense, anxious or just exhausting,” Berman has said.

The album is lyrically tense at times, but it’s constantly sonic pleasure. It begins with the spacey mid-tempo ballad “My Only.” “Now that you’re here, I don’t have a fear, you’re my only,” Berman sings, as female backing vocals float under his. “You know I breathe for you.” It’s a declaration that he and his loves will survive through any of the insecurities about which he sings going forward.

The second song, “Anymore,” is also the first single. The woozy song, like most others on the nine-track album, is different from the rest. It begins and ends with screeching guitars, but at its core it’s a dark synth-pop song. “I couldn’t take any more/ I wanted to die with you,” Berman sings in the refrain.

“The Garret” follows and is possibly the strongest song of the bunch. It’s a love song about taking shelter in an attic space, but it’s written in such unsure language as, “Our bodies break like glass/ And shatter all our fears/ I want to know you then/ When heaven disappears.” Musically, the song vibes like Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Lips Like Sugar.”

“The words I say don’t say/ The touch is what I need/ You take my youth away/ And leave me with no need.” That is the first time—but certainly not the last—that Berman sings about lacking the proper words to describe the feelings in his gut.

The glitchy, electronic “When I Dance With You” has shades of LCD Soundsystem and is one of the few tracks to prominently feature the singing in the mix. “When I dance with you, I feel OK/ ‘Cuz I know just what to do/ You get so down/ I try to comfort/ But sometimes words, they don’t do anything much at all.”

It’s another song that revisits the theme of language as a subprime form of communication.

“Who will we be in 2030?/ Oh I can’t say, but I’d like it/ If I always knew where you are,” Berman sings, revisiting the other central theme: uncertainty.

Following the title track, which marks the midway point on the album, is “Falling Apart So Slow,” with some of the more tenuous lyrics on the album. Berman appears to worry about losing his love.

Jen Goma of A Sunny Day in Glasgow sings lead on the danceable “So True,” which comes with a declaration for a call to action: “If you don’t lose some skin for the things you believe/ How do you know that you really do.” Other contributors on the album include bass by Jacob Danish Sloan of Dream Diary and horns by Kelly Pratt, who has worked with Beirut, David Byrne and St. Vincent.

The Echo Of Pleasure ends with a simplistic piano and acoustic guitar ballad, “Stay.”

“I’m losing my words, but keeping my way,” Berman sings. “And I will stay with you/ When everyone’s gone, when everyone runs/ Yes I will still be true.” Even if he can’t find the right words to say, he vows to find another way to communicate.

The strength of the album lies not in any one hit song, nor in a similarity of style. It’s in a group of nine individual songs that are tethered to each other by emotion.

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