FrenchKiss/Columbia Records- Released 18-02-09 


Passion Pit hail from Boston and make a sound that is all now, and all fantastic. Sitting permanently on the right side of bleepy, dancey otherworldy semi-cheese this is a band that, if their Chunk Of Change E.P is anything to go by, could blow their musical contemporaries out of the water. Less twee than Black Kids, less ‘woah’ than MGMT, just better than Empire Of The Sun,love, the earth and other such appropriately weighty subjects. Chuck in a bit of light psychadelia and you have a perfect party filler, with more than enough soul behind it to give it real legs.

Opener ‘I’ve Got Your Number’ is a great little eighties influenced ditty, moved along at all times by (joy!) handclaps. With it’s SNES bleeps and blurps in the background it could well descend into some ill conceived pastiche but it’s chorus of have you seen my cry/ oh it feels like diamonds is enough to grab you by the bollards every time, and transport you willingly back to a simpler time of Ed The Duck, four TV channels and Michael Barrymore just being a quality prime-time entertainer.

Following this is ‘Smile Upon Me’ with it’s low key vocal pure LCD Soundsystem, and all the better for it as I fucking love LCD Soundsystem. Sounding like a the much loved relative of ‘All My Friends’- surely one of the best tunes of recent times- it’s perfect for 5am reflections; ‘where do we go from here’? Should I make the call? Maybe I should just sit and think about it bit more, and jiggle my leg to this awesome fucking tune...?’


LCD are clearly a heavy influence throughout, with an insistent but not dominating bass prevalent though many of the tunes, not least ‘Live To Tell The Tale’, which replicates the similar, almost spoken, vocal to that of ‘Smile Upon Me.’ Again, like several of the songs on here, it has a chorus based around a nicely observed vocal; this time God bless the smile on your face/ God bless the seeds in the ground. If this sounds a bit wanky and cod-psychadelic (clears throat to the tune of ‘Electric Feel’), you’re not wrong. Yet somehow the ‘Pit get away with it and it’s gratefully possible to hear this song without the image of a load of tossers in check shirts sniffing badly cut coke of each others maxed out credit cards whirring round one’s head.

Upping the sonic bombast level from this, however, is ‘Better Things’ which sounds like the members of Black Kids and El Presidente having an almost entirely heterosexual orgy. It’s pure cheese and if it does sound a little too much like ‘Hurricane Jane’ during the verse that’s fine because it’s such a happy goddam number and it’s chorus of ‘you’re gonna drive me crazy/your’r gonna drive me mad’ is built for embarrassing booty shaking on a friends sticky kitchen floor.

So catchy, cheeky and melodic and heartfelt to the last, Passion Pit are all set for general ear-bothery. They will be great at festivals, they will be great at parties, they are great when you’re at neither. If you like your music fun with frequent dollops of emotion, these are your guys.

Posted In Album Reviews, Feb 12 2009. Words - Garth