Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 18/05/09
Label: Columbia

We've a fed up girlfriend somewhere in Boston to thank for the existence of Passion Pit. The quintet didn't start as a quintet - rather a kind of musical love letter, composed and recorded solely by frontman Michael Angelakos as he sought to fix broken promises with the "Chunk Of Change" EP. The Valentine's gift had little effect on his sore beloved, apparently, but Angelakos wanted his friends to hear the six tracks it held, so uploaded them to MySpace and started playing solo shows.

Immediately after the live debut, synth player Ian Hultquist approached Angelakos about turning Passion Pit into a band and now we have this: "Manners", the debut full-length from a fully-fledged, much hyped indie-electro quintet. So is it much cop? Well in a word, yes, but that's not the first thing that strikes you about "Manners". Rather it's the impression of endless, explosive glee conjured by tracks like "Moth's Wings" and "Folds In Your Hands" - it's a colourful, filmic album that seems determined to spend the entirety of its 45-minutes kissing in the rain.

There's no let up: it's all love, love, love and wanton optimism and at some points Passion Pit are most redolent of an American Maccabees, five shamelessly romantic young men yet to be discouraged from the pursuit of perfect romance. Opener "Make Light" even sounds like a hyperactive take on "First Love", but the likeness stutters somewhat at the thought of The Maccabees enlisting the help of a children's choir, (as Passion Pit do on "Little Secrets", "The Reeling" and "Let Your Love Grow Tall").

Like reprimanding an overenthusiastic puppy, it feels harsh to chide Passion Pit. But it has to be said: there are many who will find this record torrentially annoying. Falsettos are squeezed until throats almost burst, electronic flotsam squelches and whines like a swarm of divebombing bluebottles and the whole thing often seems so happy-clappy and desperate to be loved. But to many others, "Manners" will be a welcome zephyr of optimism ushering away the angst of epidemics and impending environmental oblivion.

It's an odd kinship, but Passion Pit's hopes of crossing over into the mainstream could lie in the doldrums: as long as people are widely agreed that life is sh*t, the benign clamour of Manners will be seen as an antidote. That's no bad thing - pop's always been reality's sliver-lining and it's refreshing to hear a band and an album brave enough to wake up everyday determined to fall in love, regardless of the cynics and the sore beloveds.

    by Kev Kharas