Reviewed by Owen Z.

In a Word: Bold

Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos has spent the better part of his musical career battling mental illness, and throughout that time, he’s used his music as Passion Pit to convey overwhelming feelings of desperation and love. His first two albums, Manners and Gossamer, were both pop electronica, chirping and whirring, while Angelakos spoke of darker things. It felt like the music of someone trapped under Sufjan Stevens’ “black shroud”, all while looking through it into a brighter, happier universe. With Kindred, Angelakos makes it very clear that things are different. On the cover sits a young boy who could be representing Angelakos himself: it’s kind of hard to miss him. And on Kindred, the shroud is off of Angelakos. Under deceptively light songs, his lyrics are his most cohesive and richest yet.

Kindred’s music is uniquely emotional: from the outside looking in, tracks like “All I Want” and “Dancing on the Grave” are nothing special, and maybe that’s true. But, just like Gossamer, these songs meld with Angelakos’ lyrics in a strange way to complement them even more. It’s a bizarre thing to say as a reviewer, but the quality of this album really does depend on whether its listener is emotionally “in sync” with it or not. Kindred definitely has its faults, and they don’t disappear when given lyrical context, but taking a deeper glance into this record reveals a lot more than what is initially heard.

Much like Father John Misty, another artist who battles his own psychological nature in his music, Angelakos finds his place at the head of the table through love. Lead single and album opener “Lifted Up (1985)” emphasizes this. It sounds quite similar to Gossamer’s “It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy”; both share soaring drums and electronic flourishes, with Angelakos’ falsetto coasting on top. But in “Lifted Up”, the mood is joyous, as Angelakos thanks the heavens for his wife over yipping samples and an earthshaking chorus. In the very next song, the Chunk of Change-meets-Toro Y Moi “Whole Life Story”, Angelakos apologizes to his wife for the couple’s level of scrutiny, pleading with her, “Don’t you let it go.” It’s evident that Angelakos loves his wife, and she plays a major part in helping him out of the significantly darker places that he was in around the time of Gossamer.

Kindred’s true value lies in the way Angelakos’ best lyrics work hand in hand with the song - at best, you get a song like “All I Want”, which manages to be sweet, caring, and passionate while staying light and avoiding cheesiness. At worst, (and unfortunately for Kindred, this happens too often to consider the album better than Passion Pit’s earlier works) you get the record’s last three songs, all of which are vindicated by their lyrics. Angelakos’ quietly entrancing lyrics of being pulled “out to sea” in “Looks LIke Rain” buoy a slow and overly syrupy track; “My Brother Taught Me How To Swim”’s regular and rather boring pop structure is transformed and saved by Angelakos’ story of, well, being saved. “Ten Feet Tall”’s bizarre, Autotuned spot as album closer comes off as a uniquely powerful look back at Angelakos’ suffering, as he sings through broken drums and sound, “It’s all I’ll ever know.”

The further I think about it, the easier I come to the conclusion that Kindred is a uniquely bold album that’s hard to like, but hard to write off. It defies a number rating - it finds power through everyday music that is truly nothing special. Kindred won’t go down as a classic, that’s for sure. But Passion Pit has created a work at once similar and different in comparison with Manners and Gossamer. To paraphrase “Whole Life Story”, Kindred has got nothing to hide. Just give it some time.

1:22 am • April 24 2015