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”

First and foremost I am finally going to respond to Dr. J’s original Facebook note about the “Top 15 Albums that have changed my life.” I will do this by giving each album a blurb, and it’s own article on this site. Expect to learn more about me and the album in question. Some will be albums I am sure most of my friends and readers (assuming I have any readers that are not also friends) are familiar with, and some maybe not so much.

Second, I am finally going to being my Dashboard article. It will be broken up into 4 or 5 blogs about each particular element I start mulling about my mind last year. (I’ve also begun reading “Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo” by Andy Greenwald so I’m going to take into account what this writer says about Emo before beginning my deconstruction of Carrabba.

Lastly, and this is one I am very excited about, I am going to write what I perceive to be the differences between “Punk” vs. “Hardcore” vs. “Metal” vs. “Rock” and each of it’s subgenres through the creation of a handy chart similar to the Heavy Metal Band Name Flow Chart found here.

You, Mr., or Mrs., or Ms. or whatever reader must keep me accountable to these very important, interesting and life-saving articles I will write. Please do this to save both your own souls and mine.