Passion Pit - Manners

Rating:

* * * *

On the surface, Passion Pit are unashamedly 80s- inspired, but 21-year-old musical upstart Michael Angelakos would barely be able to remember that potent pop decade. So let's just call this the music of now.

The beautifully titled

Eyes As Candles

is not quite Johnny Hates Jazz, with its gently chiming keyboards at the beginning, but it almost could be. It's a song like that that makes

Manners

one of those guilty pleasure albums that morphs from irritating to irresistible the more you get into it. One that you know you shouldn't like but just can't stop.

It's kinky, slightly camp, always fruity, and while Angelakos' voice is shrill and annoying at times you get used to it. Throughout there are wonky sounds that somehow fit seamlessly into songs, from the high-pitched vocoder chipmunk warbles on

Sleepyhead

to the schoolyard chant of

Little Secrets

.

The Reeling

is like a pulsing soundtrack to a music box with Madonna pirouetting round and round in her cone-shaped bra, and some of the best moments are the slower loping moments of songs like

Swimming In the Flood

and

Seaweed Song

.

Whether

Manners

stands the test of time, or indeed makes it through the rest of this year, is up for debate, but for now Passion Pit are sounding like this is where the party's at.

Scott Kara