Where’s The Knife? Where’s The Fire?

Inara George & Van Dyke Parks “Accidental” – Van Dyke Parks’ arrangement is in constant motion — swirling, twirling, dancing off in tangents. Nevertheless, the piece feels strangely static, as if Inara George’s whimsical reverie was confined to a very small space, like a large scale musical theater production in a studio apartment. George comes across like a neurotic young woman wishing herself into the role of the romantic ingenue, and largely succeeding despite an inability to shake off her anxiety, or totally dial down her bitterness. (Click here to pre-order it — and listen to the album in its entirety! — on the Everloving Records site.)

Passion Pit “Sleepy Head” – Even though it’s not doing anything particularly radical, this song feels very fresh to me. Basically, what we’ve got here is Kanye-style pitched-up samples melting into colorful, rocked-up synth riffs, and a lead vocal part that’s very excited-indie-dude-circa-the- late -00s. Everything in the song fits together so intuitively, and the song just effortlessly flows from this mildly anxious psychedelic sequence to this lovely electro riff that sounds tentatively heroic in context. As a whole, it feels like an intimate, almost painfully sincere moment on some sort of Ditko-esque astral plane. (Click here for the Passion Pit MySpace page.)