The falsetto singing is NOT the strong point here, and in some spots it’s pretty awful. Contrast the singing on Manners with MGMT, another recent indie band to utilize falsetto — the difference being that in their live performances, MGMT often sounds better than they do on record, but you can’t say the same about Passion Pit when Angelakos is struggling to hit notes.

That’s not a deal-breaker, otherwise I wouldn’t be a fan of Passion Pit. The music is awesome despite the singing, not because of it. Part of that is because, as the review notes, the sound is “huge,” and the singing is just one layer competing against many other layers of synths, drums and effects.

And the review is also correct about much of the singing being unintelligible. I’d listened to “Little Secrets” dozens of times, and still had to look up the lyrics because I couldn’t understand what was being sung on the second half of the chorus.

I haven’t studied the rest of the album’s lyrics enough to know if the other accusation, about uniformly self-absorbed lyrics, is true.

But I don’t think it’s fair for the band’s fans to accuse the reviewer of sour grapes when half the review was positive (and included some high praise), while the remaining half was pretty blunt about the album’s flaws.