Passion Pit - Manners

Colombia

To get the most out of Passion Pit’s debut album, you will need: a healthy appetite for sugary keyboard riffs, plenty of enthusiasm for falsetto vocals, and a large space in which to dance around like crazy. Having gathered these things, you can dive straight into Manners and experience all the colours promised by the album’s cover art. This is music that isn’t afraid of a bit of fluoro.

But once you’ve danced around the room a few times and flopped down on the couch, you might start to notice that there’s darkness in Passion Pit’s world as well. In between those insistent beats and sparkling keyboards, composer Michael Angelokos is asking questions like, "Is this the way my life has got to be?" and "Why do I always need to need you when you’re fleeting?," or simply requesting that we leave him alone.

Angelokos launched Passion Pit three years ago as "a humble one-man multi-track laptop project" from his college dorm room. Since then, he has managed to create Manners and gather a band to perform the album live. Passion Pit even had a hit on the Billboard Heatseekers chart with "Sleepyhead," which made it to number nine.

Passion Pit’s website describes Manners as "baroque and intricate in its construction," which sums up both its appeal and its main stumbling block. There’s enough going on here to sustain multiple listens, but perhaps too much for us to ever really get a grip on the emotion behind the material. Angelokos is in there somewhere, but more often than not, he’s obscured by the blinding brightness of his music.

If the emotion on Manners is hard to make out, its take on gender is all but buried. While Angelokos is generally singing to or about a "you," the identity of this person—like much of the album’s lyrical content—remains a complete mystery.

It’s only as the album winds down that we finally get a glimpse of the Angelokos behind the beats and sparkles. The acoustic versions of "Sleepyhead" and "Moth’s Wings" reveal a thoughtful, reflective man with a sweet, soaring voice, while the final track, a cover of The Cranberries’ "Dreams," suggests either a love of early nineties pop or a wicked sense of humour. All this points to one conclusion: we need to hear more from Passion Pit.

Review by Alice Allan

Owen Pallett - Heartland

Domino Records

Former Final Fantasy mastermind Owen Pallett’s voice is one of my favorites in music right now. On Heartland’s opening song, “Midnight Directives,” it floats alongside the violin lines, reaching high and stretching across the track, taking it in beautiful directions that both fit and conflict beautifully with the insistent drums and electronic elements. The song ends abruptly, and the next, “Keep the Dog Quiet,” begins as abruptly, with a staccato string line and quiet maraca accompaniment.

Heartland is noisier and more electronic than any previous Final Fantasy album, which makes sense given the experimental nature of the project. Pallett wrote Heartland as an opera about a peasant named Lewis, who is ordered by his God (named Owen, no less) to lead a revolt. Pallett posted all the lyrics to Heartland online in October 2009, giving fans months to pour over the poetry of the words before hearing them set to music.

The girl-group inspired melody in “Lewis Takes Action” directly conflicts with the violence in the lyrics: “I took No-Face by his beak and broke his jaw, he’ll never speak again.” “The Great Elsewhere” is a beautiful song that ends in a crisis of faith about “the indifferences of the Storyteller.” Heartland is not only beautiful to listen to, but a joy to unfold and interpret the world Pallett has created in this album.

The album ends with a question: “What Do You Think Will Happen Now?” Pallett absolutely succeeds at keeping the listener thoroughly engaged, but always with that question of marvelous uncertainty. If you like your indie music literary and elusive, Heartland is a challenge and a delight.

Review by Dana Reinoos

Emanuel and The Fear - Listen

Paper Garden Records

Initially, I was put off by Emanuel and The Fear. I didn’t understand their show tunes inspiration, their jaunty piano melodies, and their choral backing. It’s been a long road from the high school show choir stage to the sofa where I sit today, and it took several weeks for Listen to grow on me. Once it did, it was a like a viral infection for which there is no cure.

Emanuel and The Fear sound like some combination of The Mountain Goats meets Bowie meets The Polyphonic Spree meets Hedwig And The Angry Inch. (Throw in some Arcade Fire for good measure.) Epic, sweeping melodies complete with cymbal clashes blend rather comfortably with mostly-spoken lyrics. The album—a neverending musical storytelling exercise if there ever was one—is best played in one steady stream, no skipping tracks, no searching for radio-ready singles. For this reason alone, I can only imagine how amazing Emanuel and The Fear—all eleven of them—are in concert.

Though all the songs fit together seamlessly, “Jimme’s Song” was an immediate favorite with Jimme lamenting, via Emanuel, “I don’t want to do nothing but be in a rock band/I don’t wanna get a job/I don’t wanna be a man.” Thankfully—for me, if not for my partner—this anti-adult sentiment doesn’t describe my ex-boyfriends so much as it describes me. Sometimes I am so freaking pleased that I don’t conform to daily wage slavery in a cubicle; other days, it seems a little too obvious that I am over-educated and under thirty. All I want is a metaphorical rock band—the real one, not that video game fakery—to be my job, to pay the bills. Instead, I review albums. We all make compromises.

Similarly, “Free Life” speaks to the ways you can take control of your own destiny. “It’s a free life if you live it/Why not give it a try.” For all the unfortunate things I have been in my life, the worst thing I’ve ever been was confined.

“Same Way” also speaks to my romantic-but-partnered heart—as if one supersedes the other. To no one’s surprise, I am the downer half of the couple, the misanthrope who cries for no reason and will never be satisfied with my own twisted version of “success.” Just the other night, I was actively frowning (not that I noticed), and my partner leaned over to look at my glum face. “It’s really hard,” he said with total sympathy.” “What is?” I asked. “To be happy.”

How you can’t seem to be happy
Unless you’re making some poor girl feel the same
But I don’t wanna be that way
So if you gotta leave me babe
I won’t say anything

With an impressively generous nineteen songs on one album, Emanuel and The Fear remind me of all the reasons I fell in love with the total album experience as a youngster. Catch them on tour this spring and tell me how much you loved the show.

Review by Brittany Shoot