It seems significant to start the first entry of this blog by looking back – so, with that in mind, the album of the day for January 1st is Passion Pit “Manners”. It’s an album I should have picked up on in 2009, appearing in quite a few end-of-year polls of that year and hipstering it out on soundtracks to indie films. And now that we roll around and look forward to 2012 *gasp* the thing about New Year’s Day is always about recollecting, revising and revitalising.
Upon the first few listens, I rather thought that the album’s lack of emergence on my radar might have been my aversion to the MGMT-factor – initially brilliant with its upbeat sound and instantly catchy songs, but then *that* voices starts to grate and become cloying and annoying and file-to-the-I'll-leave-that-one-for-later-then.
However, it wasn’t quite that – and true, listening to "Manners" when looking out the window as it’s bleak and grey isn’t quite the same as wafting through a meadow-field with the album as the soundtrack to your summer.
The album *is* an instant foot-tapper and the songs flow well together – I particularly like the build toward the middle of the album where “Eyes as Candles” ends as a whirling dervish heading out into the stratosphere, and is pulled back to Earth by the sweet and calming “Swimming in the Flood”; not least because of the repetition of “eyes” in the first line of the lyrics.
There are songs that stand out: “Little Secrets” and “To Kingdom Come” immediately get my head nodding and my foot tapping; despite “Folds in Your Hands” starting off a bit lacklustre, I love the way it breaks and moves – simply transforms - from pedestrian into something you’d hear at a house rave. “The Reeling” begins a bit like a cast-off from a Wham album, but again metamorphoses with the child-like backing of the chorus into something infectious. The nah-nahs, ooooohs and yeah-yeahs sprinkled generously throughout the album can’t help but increase its immediacy.
It does take some time to get into the lyrics, and often I can’t make out what’s being said because of the falsetto of Michael Angelakos’ voice. He mumbles quite a bit too. I don’t know if I find this unnerving or liberating. The snatches I heard of lyrics (and then the looking them up on the interwebs) seem to suggest a religiosity – there are angels and gods in the lyrics and (although perhaps it’s the season) the peeling of church bells a la your favourite Christmas carol, particularly head on “Moth’s Wings” and “Eyes as Candles”. In fact, there seems to be conversations with God in some of the songs – and their titles “To Kingdom Come”, “Swimming in the Flood” and “Eyes as Candles” lend themselves to Bible Studies and churches.
There’s a distance between the upbeat nature of what is going on with the instruments and production and what is being said; I’m not sure whether this will improve with each listen. There’s a definite 80s synth-pop sound (maybe Wham wasn’t such a bad signpost) that will root this album firmly in 2009 – it nods strongly to La Roux and Friendly Fires, Empire of the Sun and The Temper Trap. However, some of the tricks and whizzes within each song maintains the album’s freshness and saves each song from blending into the next. There’s an individuality that is striking amidst all those synthesisers and knob-twisting.
I also have the feeling that there are conversations going on within the songs that are personal and insular, about destiny or love or spirituality: whether it’s with God or with an ex-lover, some of the songs resonate to me on a private and delicate level, as if I’m intruding on a discussion that Passion Pit are having amongst themselves, rather than them standing on a soap-box giving us their everyman view on the world.
But this isn’t a bad thing – and certainly there is an ambitious feel to some of the songs, not least the penultimate two songs “Sleepyhead” and “Let Your Love Grow Tall”. The production, lyrics and musical investigations on both songs lend themselves to stepping up to a wider stage that earlier songs shied away from. There’s an epic grandure – a surge into stadium love songs – that I can’t help but find appealing.Passion Pit @ Wikipedia
Metacritic Review
Pitchfork Review
Guardian Review
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