No new band connects the dots better than Passion Pit, a Boston-area quintet with a giddy melodic sense and an unabashed love for synth pop.
Their sparkling debut album, Manners, is—like the band’s live show—a keyboard bonanza. Beats tend to pulse. Melodies and voices tend to squeal. The 1980s provide a sonic touchstone, but (refreshingly) not in a campy way. Pop bliss is the goal here, just as it was for Ric Ocasek back in the day. Passion Pit will do whatever it takes to reach our pleasure centers—more than once, the band utilizes what sounds like a kids’ choir. A hackneyed trick? Yep. Still effective? Definitely.
The album’s best song is probably “Sleepyhead,” the squiggly jam that had earned more than 1.6 million MySpace hits by press time. But the band seems ready to move on—“Sleepyhead” is buried as the ninth of 11 tracks, and earlier cuts are almost as good. “Make Light” skitters, whomps and screeches to excellent effect, and “Moth’s Wings” is the new soundtrack for human beings running in slo-mo.
Review by By Nick Marino for pastemagazine.com
November 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am
What a great first post and thanks for using the plugin. Looking forward to more music recommendations.