Pit Happens

“It’s just a kind of freak thing that came about really,” says Michael Angelakos in a barely-awake drawl. He’s explaining the origins of the first Passion Pit EP (joyous electro pop wrapped around a strangulated emotional core). “I started writing electronic music because it was simple; you can formulate songs mathematically and visually – putting them together and arranging them on computer. So I started writing in that vein and the next thing you know there was a compilation of songs I’d written all about her.”

“Her” is the girl he famously presented these songs to as a Valentine’s gift (they’re no longer together, but are still good friends), and there, as an extravagant romantic gesture, the matter would have rested, if Angelakos hadn’t taken to the stage with a microphone and backing tape and caught the ears of keyboard-player Ian Hultquist.
“So I did a show in my school [Emerson College in Boston],” he says. “It was like karaoke. I brought in my laptop, set it up, played the songs and sang over them. It was terrible. To be honest that’s where I would have left it, if Ian hadn’t asked if I was interested in fleshing it out and making more of a project out of it. You see, usually I have this issue with starting bands, writing material and then scrapping them after one show.”
By the sounds of it, prior to the first Passion Pit EP his quitter’s mentality was no great loss.
“I was just playing indie rock music before then really. It was very depressing, slow-core kind of stuff. By the time I’d hit on the Passion Pit songs I was depressed and didn’t really know what else I wanted to write. I was scoring a lot of films, as well.” He pauses to think. “I wasn’t really focused, I guess.”
But something clicked when Angelakos discovered synthesisers, samplers and an affinity for pop music.
“I actually don’t really listen to a lot of electro pop,” he admits. “In fact the last time I listened to the Human League was about a year and a half ago. But I really like Kate Bush, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and people like that, forward-minded pop makers. Something about those people has always stuck with me. There’s a reason people are going back to get inspiration from that specific era of music. You see, people do want pop music but they want that pop music to be done in a more interesting fashion. There was a long lull there which yielded predictable and catchy pop music but it didn’t yield anything very interesting or lush or beautiful or complex or smart. Steve Reich [minimalist, often electronic, New York-based composer] is also a huge, huge influence. I want to make pop music, but I still want to maintain the more experimental side of it. It’s just that I also reach a large group of people. People aren’t self-conscious anymore about liking something that’s outright pop. And pop music can be as smart as any obscure indie band.”
Pop also seems to be the perfect playground for a downbeat former media studies student, who’s more than willing to wax lyrical about the information machine, the Marxist theories of Althusser and how the “means of production” have changed now that he’s moved from bedroom-based-production to major label budgets.
“It’s been fucking crazy,” he says in a less learned moment. “I can’t believe that a year and a half ago I was writing in my room and now here we are getting four stars out of five in Rolling Stone!”
And he’s also come to terms with moving from a one man operation (on the EP) to a five-piece band by the time the new album was recorded.
“When I wrote the EP I never thought I’d have to play it with anyone else,” he proffers. “In fact I never even thought of playing it live. But that changed. Now that there’s a group of us, everyone has a say when it comes to most of the creative decisions. It’s a very democratic group of people. We all believe in each others’ opinions and everyone has equal say. At one point it wasn’t so democratic, I suppose, but now to keep it moving along smoothly it’s the best way to do it.”
Of course, the Marxists could have a field day analysing the intriguing and alienating gulf that exists between Angelakos’s joyous music and his often tortured lyrics.
“It kind of stands for the way that I live,” he explains. “I’m a really happy fun person to be around most of the time, but inside I’m anything but. It’s difficult sometimes, but I think a lot of people are that way. So I walk around in pain and have to keep my composure and not let on that I’m feeling any certain way. The whole album is built on that idea. It encapsulates a lot of inner anguish and pain but it’s presented to you in a sugar-coated form. Yes, it’s therapeutic to write about these things, but I don’t do it for the sake of therapy... I do it because it feels right.”

Passion Pit play the Hot Press New Band Stage
on Friday July 11, and the Dublin Academy on November 3