This is Passion Pit. His real name is Michael Angelakos and (in a neat segue from my last post) in concert he plays with four other guys, but on record it’s just him. Passion Pit’s debut EP is coming out in September, but already Pitchfork and the rest of the online world is shitting themselves over his (their?) single “Sleepy Head.” This is completely with good reason.
“Sleepy Head” is three minutes of pure joy, combining the otherworldy euphoria of Sigur Rós and the electronic collages of bands like MGMT that are all the hot stuff right now. The record kicks off with a sped-up clip of Jack Kerouac, which is never a bad thing, and then jumps immediately into a mish-mash of autoharps, drums, pitch-shifted voices, handclaps, and I don’t know what the fuck else. The vocals are pure indie, maybe a little too much for my taste, but that’s forgivable in the face of the eye-melting awesomeness of the whole track. The most amazing thing about this record to me (and I’m going to be writing an extensive post about this in the next few days) is that one man heard this in his head and then was perfectly able to transpose it into a tangible, listenable form. Well, I’m ranting right now, so I’ll stop, but I’ve been listening to this song on repeat all morning. You should too, and you should do it NOW, so you can say you were into Passion Pit before he (they?) hit it big.
