Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

For many, being told as children that if you have nothing nice to say, then keep your mouth firmly shut, is a maxim to live by even into middle age or even to swear by as infirmity and shortness of breath lend a hand to day to day existence. The only trouble with that aphorism in the modern age, people tend to either believe you are being either provocative in your silence and therefore just fancy bashing you round the head with their sarcasm and ill judged retorts or, and possibly more damning, they might take the biting down on the tongue for mild acceptance, that they have done nothing wrong in life and you accept them for what they are, even if they have ventured into the beige and downbeat.

For Passion Pit, some words of the pleasant will always pass even the most mealy mouthed of people and that is especially true in the new album Kindred, for in everything, even in music, all is seemingly relative.

Yet despite the attachment many will find in reliving an era that to be fair sold an abundance of records, that set many on their way to enjoying a brand and taste of music, thankfully that era, that epoch of time in which ears never forgave, slowly slipped away, only to ever reappear in certain night clubs at home and abroad, the testament of a generation to which no holds were barred and seemingly no musical bards ever worried or concerned.

It comes to something when the most interesting part of any record is the cover, the holder of many internal secrets and whilst those covers cannot speak out loud, whilst they ask silently for themselves and the inner sanctum to be judged on different paths, Kindred is not something that can be avoided from being pronounced as so beige, so terrifyingly reliant on a beat that doesn’t bang or inspire beyond wanting to sew up the lips as if being tortured by a Medieval despot, it is as if the scenic attraction of Niagara Falls was dismissed in favour of watching a paddling pool in down town Hamilton evaporate in the noon day sun.

There are times when you have to roll up the sleeves and admit defeat, that the music you have chosen to spend time with is like dating the most ridiculous person you could hope to find at an office party and then in penance staying single for a decade or two. Something’s in life are not worth staying single for.

Kindred is the family member you fall out with over a difference of opinion, you might wonder if you were too harsh occasionally, too quick to dismiss their ignorance but in the end you know deep down, you will never have to give them house room again. It might be a better idea to save the money for a paddling pool and praying for decent weather, it would surely be more fun.

Ian D. Hall