Passion Pit – Manners

In the wave of acclaim that met Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change EP earlier this year, the critical consensus was, ironically, that this was music to be received joyfully, brainlessly, with your critical faculties turned off. And with Manners, the Massachusetts band’s debut full-length, the plea remains the same, with Sleepyhead, the giddy, glitchy romp that finds Michael Angelakos’ vocals in an uncharted octave somewhere between David Lee Roth and the Chipmunks, the stand-out track once again. Like Cut Copy or M83, Passion Pit aim for a certain euphoria by electro, an ambition that has its pitfalls. While tracks like The Reeling or Folds In Your Hands benefit from synthesizer overload, the album as a whole is rich to the point of nausea. It may well become the soundtrack to many a summer party, but it would be a critical disservice to ignore the fact that Manners is an inconsistent, superficial work.