Passion Pit – Manners
I don’t think I really hyped this album as much as a lot of the popular press, so perhaps I don’t have to feel quite as guilty about the subsequent letdown. I did like their preceding EP Chunk of Change though – in fact I liked it an awful lot – but to re-read that review is to perhaps understand why I find this album so disappointing. Here are some quotes:
“It’s just on the fringes of being way too electronic and frantic for me, and that atonal female wail seems like it’s daring me to call the whole thing tuneless garbage.”
“That distant female vocal, once you’ve adjusted, is really nice despite sometimes sounding like it was recorded in the middle of a football pitch on a mobile phone.”
“There isn’t an easy, pleasing sheen to this and I think that, as well as the satisfying, comfortable beat keeps me happy.”
Well, therein lies the problem with this full length release. It’s smooth, electronic disco-pop, and it’s shit. Previously, what I liked about this band was that off-kilter aspect to the music: the lurches and stumbles, which are almost entirely gone now. Where once there was “a less irritating Scissor Sisters”, here there is piss-poor disco pastiche band, whose eighties ‘do-dooo’ laser synth noises and other such tacky, cliched moments sound so needlessly selloptaped on top of the songs that they could be a five-year-old experimenting with the weird noise buttons on their keyboard for the first time.
So I am disappointed. Did you get that yet? I was, whilst not frothing with excitement, really rather looking forward to this album and now it’s here and it’s crap. Remember MGMT releasing the excellent, edgy Time to Pretend (now annoyingly over-played, but it’s still a good song)? And remember the incredibly soft, camp disco bobbins the rest of that album was? Well Passion Pit have managed the exact same trick, just spread across one really promising EP and subsequent, spongy, lifeless album.
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Passion Pit – The Reeling (Really, truly awful, and the epitome of what is wrong with this record.)
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My 2yr old is obsessed with The Reeling(aka The No Song), she likes it even more than MGMT – Kids.
Myself, I find Manners all good where MGMT was just three tracks good.
MGMT was definitely no more than three tracks, I agree.
In terms of this one, the danger I have with pronouncing judgement is that it is very close to not being my style of music at all, so anything I say about it has to be taken with a considerable pinch of salt. I just think the slight shift in style between the EP and the album in this case took it from just within my natural boundaries to just outside, so maybe it’s not that it’s a bad album, it’s just moved too far away from the kind of music I tend to enjoy.
Well, this is really not the kind of music I get excited about, but I don’t find anything particularly awful about it. In fact, The Reeling is sorta fun. Then again, I’ve never heard of Passion Pit before so I had no expectations. Make Light is a bit more annoying to my ears, with those keening vocals, but still not cringingly bad.
God I am so bored with this fucking band & all the needless spunking the bloggers & paper media are engaging in over this, at best, mediocre album.
It’s my opinion that they, the ‘press’, over-hyped the hysterical fuck out of this & when they finally got the album/realized it was dreadful shite they were far too embarrassed to admit ‘oops, me made a mistake on this one’.
There are far better examples/bands extolling this type of cross-over ‘music’, I have no idea why Passion Pit were singled out & publicly masturbated in the way they have been.
Passion Pit? Passion Shit, more like.
Passion Shit…?
Oh WAIT, I see what you did there.
That was very good.
It’s pretty simple, really. The EP was good, and the album isn’t. Some people did get over excited, but it was hardly without cause. Sleepyhead is a cracking pop song, a little bit different, and was accompanied by some other decent tunes.
That they couldn’t follow that up with an album, whilst disappointing, is hardly a massive surprise – it happens to groups all the time. It’s just a little frustrating, that’s all.
i like these 2 songs….in fact i’ve never heard of these lot before….so all the hype must have past me by!!!
The Reeling is really good….makes me want to dance at my desk.
“insert smiley face here”
Don’t like this.
Granted, Sleepyhead is a good track. But I’m not, & wasn’t, about to pop my moneyshot over them until the full package was on the table. Unfortunately the end result really isn’t wanking material.
Mr Coriander burned this off a friend’s CD (with every intention of purchasing a copy if he liked it, natch – he’s good like that). Sadly, you’re right, though. It’s unutterable shit.
in fact i’m pleasantly surprised that this is even being reviewed on SbT…..makes a change from the dour dirge, that we all love, that is normally up here.
i like this
“insert smiley face here”
I too have sat and wondered: Doesn’t anyone realise MGMT’s album is 3 super tracks and nothing else? So, I’m not alone. Mystery solved. I dug deeper and downloaded their earlier album. Rubbish.
I try and keep a look out for music that is a bit more trippy than the usual guitars I listen to. Have to admit, Passion Pit fills a void. Come on, it’s fun! Let your hair down. ‘Little Secrets’ does the business while getting wrecked on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
The aforementioned MGMT also fill that aforementioned void, but yeah, 3 tracks can only be played so often. Lykke Li is gooood. But I wish I could sniff out more quality blibs and blobs.
thank thank you
for calling it like it is.
Manners is not a bad album, but there is nothing to differentiate it from dozens of other albums employing the 80′s dance pop veneer.
Chunk of Change was innovative. Manners just comes across as very bland.
Chutters, that comment was just part of a menage á trois of comments between this post, the previous one and the following one.
I popped through on my lunchbreak and gave each track about thirty seconds and made my mind up!
I see your point about being just outside your “natural boundaries”. I think it’s just inside mine. And for the record, I thought Oracular Spectacular was excellent. I was put off by the hype, but liked it in spite of myself.
Matthew, spot fucking on! I’d rather listen to 8 bit Peoples (or whatever their name is, they use atari sounds to do a sort of Daff Punk thing, brilliant!) than this MOR electro/pop. No, scratch the electro, it’s just bad pop. Sorry, but it’s true.
wow, you have got to be kidding me! if you don’t like this kind of music, that’s one thing and it can be understood. if you can’t recognize the talent and brilliance of this new young composer, then you should go back and hide under your rock like a toad that you are. tell me that after you listen to this once that it’s not stuck in your head. i don’t believe it’s not. not everyone likes the same kind of music and that is good, but these compositions are far, far from crap and thankfully more educated critics recognize that fact. now you read the real reviews from clash and rolling stone:
http://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/passion-pit-manners
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/28068109/review/28123936/manners
Yeah, they are rubbish.
I still like dancing around the room to ‘Moth’s wings’ though. (Actually originally came across Passion Pit when searching for Moth related music to annoy people with during the moth infestation of ’09. It was very, very localised.)
Never heard the EP (although computer tells me I have a couple of tracks?) so no let down.
i love the album…i love “the reeling”…and hope to god that when i go see them tonight at the troubadour people will DANCE. see, it’s a dance record. be happy, move your feet, smile. take off those awful (throw back) ray bans and move around a bit.
You’ve never seen me dance, have you Brad. Believe me, no-one wants that!
And to think p4k gave this 8.1… I’m always sorry when I look these things up.
What’s the sdeal with Bitchcock these days? Do they have a fulltime/dedicated ‘staff’, who clearly don’t know heir arse from their elbom musically, or do they just get 15yo work experience schoolsters in to review the stuff?
I really should check spelling before I automatically hit enter…
Brad is God
“insert smiley face here”
Matthew, is this your Black Kids for 2009..?
Matthew, is this your Black Kids for 2009..?
On the nose, Dev.
I just know Mrs Cog is going to love this lot.
I think the only saving grace is that a new generation of kids have to put up with the electronic drum PTOW PTOW thing and it serves the ungrateful little sods right. They should have stuck with The Strokes when they had the chance.
Off to have a calming Man of Aran thing…
Black Kids. I shudder to remember. This lot at least produced one good EP before turning into a great big pile of steaming jobbies though – all Black Kids ever did was one fucking song, wasn’t it? Or was there more which I missed.
Fucking Black Kids. Fuck me. Thanks for reminding me Dev, I really appreciate that.
Oh, and Cogstar, that fucking god-awful ‘ptow-tow’ thing is one of the most hateful noises in fucking music. It may be a shit song, but it really doesn’t deserve that – it just sounds like someone plonked it on top for no fucking reason.
oh uh! the ptow ptow thing is in there, that’s all that matters. There can be no coming back from that point.
Even your hoards of Muso boffin mates couldn’t find one decent tune with a ‘ptow’ in it. (I don’t think Springsteen stuck one in ‘Going Down’did he?).
Man of Aran really is very calming. Like the drug on Miranda.
Funnily, considering it is a song about male rape, Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror is even more so.
Voldermania, would it be inappropriate to gloat that I saw it performed live by the band here during the Film Festival last year?
Because I’m going to!
Cogstar, I think we should open that question up to the people – I’ll ask this week.
adorei, beijo-abraço, aperto de mao, socos e voadoras.
I encourage gloating.
omg I totally thought the same thing when I was hearing passion pit’s singles! I was like umm… this is too clean for me haha. they sound better rough and messy.
I was going to review this, but I won’t bother. Thanks for summing up my thoughts on the album. There is nothing memorable about the whole tepid affair. I listened to it twice and not a single note stayed with me. Even the Sleepyhead single is pish-poor. I’m going to forget all about it now. Won’t be hard.
Oh I rather like Sleepyhead – it’s catchy as fuck at the very least. I’m with Maya though – rough and messy wins for me.
Matthew, you have no fucking taste in music. No offense.
None taken.