Lorne Behrman Releases New Album 'If Heaven Didn't Hurt'

09-26-2026

New York City rocker Lorne Behrman has released his brand new album, "If Heaven Didn't Hurt," via Spaghetty Town Records. The label sent over the following details:

Behrman was on a plane, looking out the window into blue sky and cotton ball clouds when the phrase, "If heaven didn't hurt, I'd be with you" popped into his head. Immediately, the NYC-based punk rock n' roll artist thought of two women in his life who lost their husbands tragically and prematurely. Those poetically mysterious words inspired the name and conceptual thread of his third full-length album, If Heaven Didn't Hurt.

"I guess I was thinking of the naive idea of heaven, and how pain seemed like the cost of entry. Then, there was the darkly comical thought, 'I'd be with you if only it didn't hurt,' like there was a playful cowardice of wanting to avoid the pain to be reunited with someone you love," Behrman laughs.

Behrman has previously issued two critically-acclaimed full-lengths and an EP. His releases have garnered accolades and features in The Aquarian, Classic Rock Magazine, Vive Le Rock Magazine, Metronome, Glide Magazine, New Noise, Goldmine, and taste-making punk mag Razorcake. Behrman has played shows with Richard Lloyd (Television), Jeremy & the Harlequins, Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Jonny Polonsky, Adam Masterson, Lulu Lewis, and Diane Gentile, among many others. Outside of his solo career, Behrman has toured and recorded with The Dimestore Haloes, L.E.S. Stitches, The Dead Tricks, The Sweet Things, and The Outlaw Vinnie Stigma.

If Heaven Didn't Hurt was produced and mixed by Matt Chiaravalle (Warren Zevon, Courtney Love, Debbie Harry, Joe Bonamassa), and features Howard Alper on drums (Cory Glover, Laura Branigan, $yndrm), Matthew Jacob Dougherty on bass, Rob Clores on keyboards (Black Crowes, Jesse Malin, Tom Jones), Danielle McCullough on backing vocals, and The Uptown Horns (James Brown, Tom Waits, The Rolling Stones).

The duality of heartbreak and humor defines the 10-track album, which stumbles through New York's East Village in a hungover stupor, tripping down the avenues, pondering the lives of these two women, their husbands, and how his own story felt spiritually intertwined with their narratives.

As factual timelines took on fictionalized storylines, Behrman curated a cinematic sleaze-o'sphere of gritty 1970s New York, the kind you see in Taxi Drive, Mean Streets, and The Panic At Needle Park, and superimposed imaginative tales of desperation, depravity, and, ultimately, a kind of burnished salvation.

Evocative songwriting is nothing new to Behrman's oeuvre-he tends to favor stylishly evocative lyrics-but this time he broke through some of his self-imposed stylistic parameters. The opening track, "If Heaven Didn't Hurt," delves into Velvet Underground-like hypnotic minimalism and Behrman's poetic words here exude a gothic flair.

The lead single, "They Won't Take Us Alive," is the type of punk rock n' roll that has defined Behrman's career throughout his time as a punk rock n' roll vet. It's catchy and urgent, and presents the narrative of a couple splitting up while someone they both love dies of cancer. The album focus track, "Ain't It Funny," recalls 1970s Rolling Stones and Kill City-era Iggy Pop, replete with horns courtesy of the legendary Uptown Horns (The Rolling Stones, James Brown, Tom Waits). This song is the album's thematic centerpiece. It's written about one of the husbands who died before his time, and thrusts the listener into a harrowing post-Vietnam mental hellscape of disappointments, frustration, and misunderstood sadness.

Other tracks delve into beatnik bossa nova ("Take A Little Time"), post-punk disco ("Pink Cocaine"), and Stonesy balladry ("I Want to Love You Again" and "Where Street Lights Don't Shine"). The album concludes with the glistening neo-gospel lament, "After The Ramblin' Is Done." "That song is like the closing credits to the album. It's something of a prayer, and it offers a kind of battered hope," Behrman says. "After I get through all of this bullsh*t, I can be with you, but I need to work through a lot of darkness." Stream the album at Spotify