06/Passion Pit/Manners
Love is a battlefield. Love Stinks. Love…it’s a losing game. And, best of all, love hurts, hurts like a goddamn T.K.O.! Ask the men of Passion Pit, who over the course of this album’s 11 tracks fight hard for love, yearn hard for love, and will stop at nothing til that love is attained or returned. Like a wolf howlin’ at the moon, lead singer Michael Angelakos and his fellow lovesick comrades in the band let it all hang out, demanding to be heard, and they’ll try, and they’ll scream, and they’ll beg til they can get what they want and make sense of it all. Along for the ride is the music, dizzyingly hypnotic and wonderfully spastic, ready to burst at the seams, just like Michael’s heart, but doesn’t, never venturing too far off the deep end, keeping the “chaos” (and emotion) under control. Emotionally defiant, yet joyously cathartic, the notes and melodies echo the lyrics’ sentiments and Michael’s yelps, hollers, and pleas, often standing in for his heart when words fail him/escape him/are not needed. The trembling violins at the top of “Swimming in the Flood”; the heavy, plodding keyboard and foggy horn breakdown on The Reeling; The “Sha-la-las” and “Na-Na-Nas” that run throughout the synth-tastic shakedown of Eyes as Candles. Not to mention the bells, whistles, hand claps, and wallowing echoing harmonies that present themselves every so often over the course of the album’s run. Yes there’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. A little “Ra-Ra-Siss-Boom-Bah!”/cacophony of sound set in place to soften love’s blow as you try to make sense of it all, hope for the best and keep on climbing higher. Let it, like the love one holds for another, overtake you.
KEY TRACKS: Moth’s Wings/The Reeling/Sleepyhead
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