Passion Pit, Phoenix, & Grizzly Bear
We realize reviews of these albums are a little irrelevant at this point, but we’ve at last given them all proper listens, and we figured it was time to talk a little bit about three of the biggest albums of 2009… go figure!
Passion Pit’s debut album “Manners” is everything we wanted and hoped it would be. Like every other self-respecting person with ears and an inkling for indie music, we spun their debut single Sleepyhead hard last year; if you were fans of the song too (and chances are you were!!) you’ll love the album, it’s more of the same. “Manners” is eleven twitching, psychedelic and screeching, pop ditties, each characterized by Michael Angelakos’s oh-so-familiar rocketing falsetto. If anything, it’s almost too much of the same, but it’s a completely enjoyable bustling electro-pop debut with some pretty neat song writing. It’s also absolutely fantastic when they turn down the pace a bit, like on one of our album favorite Seaweed Song, an almost-ballad, sweeping love song from the Cambridge quintet. Favorite tracks: Make Light, Little Secrets, Seaweed Song.
French quartet Phoenix slid easily into our hearts with their fourth studio album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.” The album, a frothy, entirely danceable pop-rock affair, feels completely settled, gentle almost, and lead singer Thomas Mars, with his set of soft, twinkling pipes, sounds to us like an old friend. Each listen of the new album gets better; this really isn’t one to miss. Favorite tracks: Lisztomania, Fences, Lasso, Rome.
We like Grizzly Bear’s much-hyped new album “Veckatimest.” We don’t love it yet, though. The art-rockers keep the creeps and cracks and slamming doors and fluttering flutes of 2006′s absolutely amazing “Yellow House,” and on the new album they turn up the pop a bit. It sounds fantastic on lead single Two Weeks, the album’s completely melodic pop romp; we kind of wanted more of that. That being said, it took us ages to like “Yellow House;” we have no doubt we’ll keep this album spinning all year. Favorite tracks: Two Weeks, All We Ask.
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