albums and tracks

Editor's rating

Michael Angelakos's girlfriend must have been awfully indiscreet with the songs he recorded on his laptop for her Valentine's present - within months they'd been heard by everyone in Cambridge, Massachusetts, snared him a record deal and been released as Passion Pit's resonant debut EP Chunk Of Change. If Michael was playing a long game, it paid off.

The hype mill's been picking up speed since that release last autumn, and now Manners arrives as one of the year's most breathlessly anticipated full debuts. So are the now five-piece band worth the red-hot tips? If anything they've been underestimated. This is gorgeous, lush, of-the-moment electro-pop: MGMT's brightest flourishes without the codswallop hippy-dipping; Scissor Sisters' glittering audacity without, well, them.

Order of the day is splashy euphoria, songs with proud beats and sticky tunes. 'Moth's Wings', owing a heavy debt to Canadian pop classicists Miracle Fortress, is an early head-turner, all sonic depth and show-stopping chorus, while 'Make Light' boasts a hook powerful enough to change your body temperature.

So confident is Angelakos of his melodic gifts, he manages to throw a children's choir into 'Little Secrets' and 'The Reeling' without emerging cloaked in naff. The former even sounds like Howard Jones, but no one's calling the cred cops.

'Sleepyhead' recalls the wood-nymph chirrupings of The Avalanches' 'Since I Left You', and 'Seaweed Song' is lyrically gauche - "Nobody knows you the way you know you/But I think I do" - but enchanting.

Overall, there's a Disney sheen to these songs which, along with Angelakos's soaring falsetto, brings to mind the magic of Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs. It's flaky, but there's real mass appeal too. Not to mention killer tracks to grace any Valentine's Day mixtape.

Matthew Horton