Music Review: Passion Pit, “Manners”

Rating: 86

Passion Pit delivered its first wet kiss with last year’s “Sleepyhead,” an intoxicating psychedelic electro-dance song with at least five stellar hooks backing Michael Angelakos’ histrionic falsetto. Right on cue with a batch of tracks that equal or top “Sleepyhead,” the band’s full-length debut, “Manners,” is a catchy catalog of ’80s funk-pop flourishes, regal techno ballads and Angelakos’ expert facility for wrangling killer earworms.

Top of the pops for “Manners” is “The Reeling,” an ebullient disco raver accented by a children’s chorus and the kind of beats that were made for strobe lights. “Little Secrets” contains some of the best Rick James-style funk keyboard work this side of a Chromeo disc, and when Passion Pit dials down the beats-per-minute with “To Kingdom Come,” Angelakos displays a stylistic range to match his vocal ability.

Above all else, “Manners” is top-shelf fun, a collection of undeniable melodies filtered through equal parts ’80s new wave and modern psychedelia. Like label mates MGMT before him, the 21-year-old Angelakos’ obvious fondness for synth-funk candy coupled with enviable musical instincts and a taste for woozy atmospherics, is venturing into a trippy new cosmos for freak-pop.