Hype has a horrible way of making the cynical amongst us suspicious and the initial curiosity to check out the highly touted EP Chunk of Change from this year’s indie darlings Passion Pit left many with shoulders shrugged and foreheads furrowed.

The hype grew out of a cute back-story when a collection of tunes written by the band’s leader Michael Angelakos for his girlfriend grew a cult following at Boston University before leeching out into the echo chamber of the blogosphere praise. Nice PR work the cynics trumped – ‘It’s just a tape of sweetly earnest love songs written by a Postal Service fan in a coy attempt to win back his girlfriend. Fer God’s sake there’s a song called Cuddle Fuddle... bloody young love!’ But like Vampire Weekend, the collegiate upstarts of 2008, Passion Pit have managed to craft a debut album of anthems for the idealist that lives buried beneath the snide asides of all pop cynics.

Only one of the EP’s tacks makes it to the Manners album – the sampledelica of Sleepyhead, which could have slotted into The Avalanches masterpiece Since I Left You. The Avalanches frequently crop up in Passion Pit hype as a reference point, with both groups rising to explosions of ecstatic joy. However Angelakos’s indie electro tunes for the happily lovelorn are simpler than the stew of influences tumbling in the Avalanches work – think Cut Copy or Junior Boys if they were raised in the sunshine rather than in wintery cold.

Angelakos’s voice and sentimental lyrics are the culprits for some initial caution as there’s a nasal edge to his voice that conjures a dorm room mess of asthma pumps and scrawled poetry. Detractors may suggest these faults may be the reason his girlfriend left in the first place, but by the giddy rush of The Reeling an idiot grin creeps across your face and you have the strangest hankering for fairy floss.

From the triumphant flourishes that introduce the album’s opening track Make Light Passion Pit bursts forth with as much optimism as Obama’s election campaign, which perhaps not incidentally succeeded as Angelakos headed into the studio to record this album.

The kids of PS 22 crowd the mic on the peak of Little Secrets and gorgeous Moth’s Wings – perhaps the first lover’s plea to employ insect comparisons. The kids also add their backing vocals to Let Your Love Grow Tall (They know what to do/ so I’ll pray for them and I’ll pray for you/ till my face turns blue’) while Eyes As Candles is as smooth as the purest of ‘80s yacht rock. But it’s the pure sunshine hit to the temple provided by The Reeling, with the kiddies again lifting the chorus and the Antibalas horn section dropping by for a brief cameo, that provides the album’s dizzy highlight.

The sugary rush is a thrill but there’s so much wholesomely joyous romance here it can feel a little like open day at Christian youth camp, just before the teens sign their True Love Waits pledges. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional ice-cream head ache, but if every bite of gave you an agonising kick to the frontal lobe would you keep chewing?

Passion Pit’s tunes are likely to find their home as the opening song on the mixtapes that never get passed on to that secret crush. They’re the perfect soundtrack to imaginary romances, but there may be too much fantasy here; surely it can’t last.