Since Chris and I are dedicated to bringing you all the best in new music, and these reviews are just too fancy to resist, we’ll be posting some of our album reviews over the summer! The summer’s looking pretty good for music, make sure to keep checking back!

Passion Pit
“Manners”
4.5 out of 5

Passion Pit’s EP Chunk of Change was originally intended for one person. That person being frontman Michael Angelakos’s girlfriend, as a Valentine’s gift. A few friends of his got their hands on it and demanded more, and soon after, Passion Pit was formed. And it was good.

Trying to describe this band’s sound is near impossible though; the best description I’ve been able to come across has been “Cut Copy meets Dan Deacon meets Animal Collective meets Jackson 5.” They’ve got the much sought after talent of crafting extremely catchy tunes consistently and even managed to use a children’s choir effectively on “Little Secrets” (something widely tried, but rarely executed well).

With Passion Pit’s breakout single, “Sleepyhead” being widely accessible to college kids and in-the-know indies, they gained a good amount of hype, and with their debut Manners, Passion Pit is proving that there’s a little more to them than Michael Angelakos’ falsetto and the band’s overly energetic synths. Though it’s hard to imagine that these guys have the ability to mellow out, they prove it on many of the tracks here, most notably, “Moth’s Wings”.

When it all boils down, you come out with a collection of excellent songs all on one CD, which, if you think about it, is what albums should be. Expect this to be showing up on a lot of Best Albums of 2009 lists!

Key Tracks: “Sleepyhead”, “Moth’s Wings,” “Little Secrets”

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The Juan MacLean
“The Future Will Come”
3 out of 5 stars

Are you a DFA records junkie salivating over the LCD Soundsystem record James Murphy hinted would arrive this year? Well, the Juan MacLean are here with their second studio album to whet your appetite in the meantime.

For those of you unfamiliar, here’s a little primer: half of the Juan MacLean is a fellow named (gasp!) John MacLean. A friend/band mate of Murphy’s since the late-80s, he was urged to re-enter the music industry in the mid-2000′s following a sabbatical spent getting his degree and teaching English in New Hampshire. Back in NYC, he teamed up with Nancy Whang, touring keyboard/synth player of LCD Soundsystem and released his 2005 debut on Murphy’s DFA Records.

And guess what? They sound more than a little like LCD (“The Future Will Come” just reeks of “Losing My Edge”‘s dirty beats.) Within its genre, though, that’s not at all a bad thing. The shorter tracks are strong, sometimes standout synthpop numbers (see: “One Day”) and eight minute-plus offerings like “The Simple Life” and “Tonight” cover enough sonic territory to substantiate their runtimes.

TSR listeners who enjoyed Rokysopp and MSTRKRFT’s latest releases will see this as a welcome addition to our Heavy Rotation.

Key Tracks: “One Day”, “The Simple Life”