Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Day 118/365 - Passion Pit at the Black Cat



I headed over to the Black Cat tonight to see an electropop triple bill consisting of much buzzed-about headliners Passion Pit and opening acts Cale Parks and Paper Route. It was a young and studiously hip crowd. It's entirely possible I was the oldest person there, including the bartenders.

I had thought about skipping the openers and just showing up for the headline act, but I'm glad I didn't. Cale Parks turned out to be a one-man trippy, trancy groove fest and Paper Route cranked out pulsating, pounding, rave rock (think Jimmy Eat World meets Prodigy). Generally I'm not that into electronic music, but both of these acts were well worth the 15 bones it cost to get in the door.

I have to confess to being a bit underwhelmed by the Cambridge, Massachussetts-based Passion Pit, however. From the three tracks they posted on their myspace page I thought they would play chilled out electronic lounge music, but in person they are far rockier and fast-paced. They came across like an electronic, falsetto, less-funky version of Vampire Weekend.

Passion Pit is a perfectly fine band and they seem like an energetic, earnest group of guys (although you would be hard-pressed to find five nerdier-looking dudes on stage anywhere), but I don't think they quite live up to the 'next big thing' tag that has recently been stuck on them. Hopefully some of the buzz that has descended upon Passion Pit will trickle down to their tourmates Cale Parks and Paper Route. They're certainly deserving of a bit more hype. Passion Pit, perhaps a bit less.

They were still good, though and I hope they ride this wave as long as they can because they seem like friendly, down-to-earth guys.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

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