I found today’s song review, first of hopefully many, on NPR’s SXSW mix page. The page allows you to stream over a hundred artists that played SXSW last week, and download some of the songs. Actually, quite a few of them. About 30 or so, but who’s counting, right? One of the songs I downloaded is by an artist called Passion Pit and the song is called “Sleepyhead.”

The song starts off ah la Jay Z’s black album minus Jay’s Mom’s monologue. A strong four/four beat with samples, keys, hand claps, and even the omnipresent, chipmunk-sounding female vocal. Excluding Alvin, the song is completely vocal-less for the :45 second intro (almost 1/3 of the song!), but when the vocals do come in I was completely surprised: the singer sounds more like the dude from the Shins than Kanye (or T Pain, but I think he’s a guilty pleasure of mine.)

Is this a mash-up I have never heard before? Indie Rock and Hip Hop? While it makes perfect sense for the modern white boy to comodify modern black culture, I would expect it to be more like Eminem or Andy Samberg, not Hipster Runoff MC’ing an uptown NYC club.

Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead” reeks of MGMT to me (as if I’m an expert) but its up-tempo, happy club feel betrays its forlorn lyrics about destruction, isolation and the lack of understanding the other, even if they only happen to occupy the same dance floor. Wait a minute, does this remind you of classic white boy pain? Overly emotionalized lyrics about not understanding the girl on the other side of the room? Hmm, sounds like postmodern wire framed emo to me. Still rocks though… even if you’re dancing to this one by yourself. 5/5

Download it Passion Pit “Sleepyhead”