From Despair To Here

It would be nice to report that Michael Angelakos is looking rather upbeat for a chap who, six months ago, tried to jump off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but that would be a lie. In his Olympia Theatre dressing-room, the Passion Pit singer shuffles in his seat, frowning from beneath an enormous wool hat (it’s borderline oppressively warm and you wonder what sort of chill, exactly, he’s trying to ward off).

We’re here to talk about the devastating bout of mental illness that saw him very nearly take his own life over the summer and resulted in a prolonged stay at a psychiatric hospital. Or at least Hot Press is. Initially it’s not clear that Angelakos is interested, particularly, in opening up. That’s all behind him now, he insists. He has a supportive networks of friends – to say nothing of a loving fiancée, accompanying the band on their biggest ever European tour. He has every reason to believe he’ll make it through okay.
“It’s been pretty well publicised,” he says of recent difficulties. “I had to go to a hospital and get help. I hope I’m alright now. I don’t ever want to go back. I’ve been inside hospital plenty of times for the same reason. It’s never fun.”
He was diagnosed bipolar aged 18 and, as he says, has been in and out of institutions ever since. However, things have taken a steady turn for the worse since Passion Pit achieved international success with 2009’s Manners. A major hit in an age when such things are increasingly rare, Angelakos’ label, Columbia, was eager for the band to capitalise on the success by releasing a follow-up as quickly as possible. Last summer they had their wish, with the arrival of the group’s second LP, Gossamer. However, the pressure took its toll on Angelakos, who writes and arranges the music. In the end, it seemed to push him over the edge completely.
The drama unfolded in real time. When this journalist spoke to Angelakos in July, he was frank that he was coming out of a tough period. Yes, he was bipolar and, no, his illness had nothing at all to do with Passion Pit’s darkly euphoric sound. Juxtaposing uplifting melodies with depressive lyrics was the oldest trick in the pop playbook and he would hate for anyone to think he was trying to glamorise his issues. The conversation ended on an upbeat note – he was looking forward to touring and felt the worst was behind him.
He was terribly, terribly wrong. A few days after our chat he gave an interview to a journalist at Pitchfork. They covered much the same territory – the trauma he had gone through recording Gossamer, the way his drinking had begun to spiral – at his first meeting with the album’s producer Chris Zane he showed up having consumed a bottle and a half of gin and was barely coherent.
Just 24 hours later the same journalist got a call: it was Angelakos, at an upstate New York mental health facility. The singer had woken that morning and decided he would jump off Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, an elevated road linking New Jersey and the Bronx.The singer’s logic was chilling. He had a great fiancée, was immensely proud of Passion Pit’s new album. His life, in other words, could not get any better. From here things would only go downhill. Why not exit on a high?
It wasn’t his first attempt at killing himself. At the apartment in Brooklyn Heights that he shares with his significant other, food blogger Kristy Mucci, he is “on constant suicide watch.” He says that Mucci didn’t want him to buy a fancy new siphon coffee-maker because it utilises an open flame and she worried what he might do. Last year, she actually had to wrestle him to the ground after he declared he was going to leap out the window (he alludes to the incident on Gossamer track ‘On My Way’, crooning, ‘Just believe in me, Kristina/All these demons, I can beat them.’).
In all likelihood he would have jumped off that expressway in July had he not gone to a doctor the same day seeking a prescription refill. Alarmed at his behaviour, the medic arranged, on the spot, for Angelakos to be taken to a treatment facility outside New York. Which is where he stayed for the best part of a month, kicking the booze and trying to make sense of his world. This made headlines as Passion Pit were forced to cancel a mini-tour of the US.
“We promised to be places and we couldn’t be there,” he says, shaking his head. “That isn’t fun. The only reason I decided to be open about things in the first place is that I felt our fans required an honest explanation. I didn’t think there was anything to be ashamed of. I didn’t choose to have a mental disorder. Nobody chooses that. I had to do something about it. A course of action that was painful at first [admission to hospital] turned out to be one of the smartest steps I could have taken. I found some really good treatment. I’m seeing if it’s working. Every day is a new day. Who knows? I could wake up one morning and say ‘I can’t do this any more’. So far it’s been positive.”
He’s still furious about a British newspaper interview which, at his lowest over the summer, painted him and his illness in what he regarded as an inappropriately melodramatic light.
“It was total bullshit,” he grimaces. “I was so angry when they put that up, when people call you a self-obsessed narcissist trying to blame his problems on something else. When, in fact, the point you are trying to make is that you are attempting to humanise the issue by being open about it. It was one of the most misquoted, out-of-context things I’ve read.”
What really pisses him off is the idea that Passion Pit’s music functions as an outlet for his mental health issues. He does not wish to be a posterboy for bipolar disorder or be perceived as giving it a tragi-romantic gloss. Being ill sucks and does not make you a more interesting artist, no matter how badly segments in the media wish this were so.
“The happy/sad thing… it’s the oldest trick around. The girl-pop music from the ‘60s, just listen to that. There is nothing revelatory about saying my music is happy and sad. ABBA did that all the time. They’re a great example of a band you could liken to Passion Pit – they created well-structured pop songs, where there was almost a math to it. And yet still with a lot of heart in there.”
Strangely, at around the time Angelakos was wrestling with his mental health, Passion Pit were courted by stuffy menswear institution Brooks Brothers. The label was looking for hip new ambassadors. Having seen pictures of Passion Pit rocking their suits at an awards ceremony, Brooks Brothers decided to reach out. Now a glossy campaign featuring the group in über hip Thom Browne Brooks Brothers threads can be seen in magazines and on billboards across America.
“We didn’t even think they were going to use the pictures,” Angelakos reveals. “It ended up as this big campaign. That’s great for us. We need to pay the bills!”
Did they enjoy mugging for the cameras? You imagine it must have all turned rather Zoolander.
“Michael does a great ‘Blue Steel’” pipes up drummer Nate Donmoyer who’s been quietly ironing his pants in the corner. “You should see his ‘Magnum’. It’s amazing…”
Angelakos sort of smiles.
“No.” he says softly, “I didn’t do ‘Blue Steel’…”
And then he lapses into stoic silence and you wonder, not for the first time, what is going on inside his head.

Gossamer is out now. Passion Pit’s ‘Where I Come From’ is on the soundtrack to Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2.