Pit Stop

Ah, the glamorous lifestyle of a successful rock band. Passion Pit’s Ayad Al Adhamy, Nate Donmoyer and Jeff Apruzzese woke up this morning already seasick, on a bus in a ferry hold, surrounded by car alarms going off.

Still and all, there are legions of musicians who would kill for the breaks they’ve had. Within a year, the psychedelic electro-rockers have gone from being workaday students at a Boston private college to every hipster in the western world’s favourite new band, via a signing to über-trendy New York label French Kiss. Glowing reviews in Rolling Stone and on Pitchfork have followed, not to mention three million myspace hits.
Hot Press caught up with the percussion, bass and synths side of the operation ahead of their Academy headliner. They’re six weeks into the tour for their first LP, Manners and they look exhausted, poor things. They don’t mind me saying so.
“In the next 24 hours we’ll have done three ferry trips. But that always happens to us in Ireland. We never get to stay and hang out,” says Al Adhamy (synths). He’s planning just one bit of sight-seeing before the gig, a pilgrimage to the Phil Lynott statue on Harry Street.
On a couch next to him, drummer Nate Donmoyer is slumped, almost motionless, beside bassist Jeff Apruzzese. Apruzzese seems relatively alert – but that could be attributed to the large paper coffee cup he’s clutching.
“I wake up in the morning and I’m not really sure where I was the night before. It’s fun to be in all these different places. But the truth of the matter is that everything is so fast paced, we’re in these places for such a short time it’s…” Apruzzese thinks for a second. “A whirlwind.”
Donmoyer finds that gigging nearly every night for weeks on end makes him hyper-critical of his own performance. The other two make sympathetic noises. Perversely, playing more or less the same set each night makes it harder to play well – there’s a tendency to slip into autopilot.
“You just always want to play the perfect show – especially sold out nights. If it’s not perfect, it’s magnified. You get into this muscle memory where everything is exactly the same every day, so when something changes it throws you,” says Donmoyer.
All three seem genuinely thrilled to be back in Dublin for their fourth Irish show of the year.
“It seems to be the best crowds, the most fun. Our theory is that because we have a Gaelic sample [Mary O’Hara singing ‘Óró mo Bháidín’ on ‘Sleephead’], our first Dublin show was nuts. And our two Irish festivals [Oxegen and Electric Picnic ‘09] were obscenely awesome. We’ve had some people throw Mary O’Hara vinyl at us on stage,” says Al Adhmady.
Without prompting, he also offers the opinion that the English audiences are the least fun to play to. Ayad, you’re a man after Dublin’s heart.
“It’s one thing I’m going to start saying to the English press,” he says, adopting a conspiratorial tone.
“If the crowds listened to the albums they’d have way more fun at gigs. People will know three songs in England and it’s like, why did you come?”
Why indeed. Passion Pit play the Olympia in March – I’d get my tickets sooner rather than later if I was you.