At its most bombastic, Kindred is a battlefield of its own eccentricities with no regard for or worry about approaching a tipping point.
After the doom and gloom of 2012’s Gossamer, Kindred sees Angelakos walking back into the light.
Kindred expresses a version of hesitant romance where disaster lurks but may not be inevitable, and where the moment is everything.
On the group's excellent third album, Kindred, Angelakos has crafted a record which seems hopeful in the face of the world's myriad of disappointments, obstacles, and unseen villains, buoyed by the most dynamic, expertly calibrated synth pop of his career.
Clocking in at just under 36 minutes, Kindred is easily the most consistent and thematically focused Passion Pit record to date.
This new-found sense of greater perspective has led to a maturation in Passion Pit's sound; this is as close to an out-and-out pop album as we're going to get.
While Kindred remains meticulously and impressively crafted, it just doesn’t carry the same emotional weight.
Gossamer standouts like “Take a Walk” and “Carried Away,” might reach greater heights than the best songs on Kindred, but as a whole, this latest effort is much more accessible, consistent, and bursting with positivity.
Even if there's still a sneaking suspicion Angelakos used up his very best tunes on 2008 debut EP 'Chunk Of Change', this dewy-eyed record sweeps you up in its joie de vivre all the same.
Kindred lives and dies on the strength of its melodies, and some of those melodies are submarined by excess rather than enhanced by it.
Unlike previous Passion Pit releases, Kindred’s arrangements are a heap of disjointed sound fragments glued into a form that exists solely to support the glossy veneer.
In spite of its earnest intentions, the music continues to bulldoze its way through sincerity; piles of chaotic, claustrophobic production and slick, synthy sophistication.
Unfortunately, Kindred only loses the plot further, entrenching itself in a sonically limited pop vocabulary (starchy synth lines; bristling, reverb-doused percussion; and huge, multi-tracked choruses) that's even further away from the chaotic chemistry of his debut.
A project at their most bombastic and electronic, Kindred is a significant step up from its predecessor.
I always appreciated Kindred as a nice evolution from Gossamer's bleak hopelessness. Each track here is a more direct, sugary pop treat and brings a sigh of relief after the dark depths that came before. While, I can totally get how it wouldn't be a move musically that everyone would get behind, I can bump this album anytime.
A lot of the content on Kindred is framed as a return to normalcy and moving on from hardships. He mainly writes songs aimed at his wife. Some are about their love and ... read more
I wasn’t really all that impressed with their sophomore record, but man, what the fuck happened here.
This album is annoying, generic, and boring. The bubblegum pop sound has been turned up to an extreme and just sounds like basic ass radio pop at this point. All the things that made Gossamer interesting are absent and missing.
The album started on a good note with *Lifted Up (1985)* with its hard hitting and catchy chorus. The production is fine and doesn’t sound too generic, ... read more
I think the ideas on this one are better than on Gossamer but i do think its worse.
Lifted Up (1985) is a great starting track and i love a few of the other tracks as well
Pretty good follow up to Gossamer, but isnt its successor
1 | Lifted Up (1985) 4:23 | |
2 | Whole Life Story 3:18 | |
3 | Where the Sky Hangs 3:51 | |
4 | All I Want 3:26 | |
5 | Five Foot Ten (I) 4:34 | |
6 | Dancing on the Grave 3:28 | |
7 | Until We Can't (Let's Go) 4:06 | |
8 | Looks Like Rain 3:55 | |
9 | My Brother Taught Me How to Swim 4:13 | |
10 | Ten Feet Tall (II) 2:55 |