Passion Pit: 'Bloggers are so lame'

Boston's electro sops Passion Pit were hyped and almost crushed by the blog buzz, but a storming Glasto set and a boss debut album prove they're more than just 2009's 'new MGMT', says Krissi Murison

The first words out of Passion Pit singer Michael Angelakos's mouth are not ones you expect to hear from the new electro indie sensation, currently being heralded as one of the best songwriters in pop.

"After what we went through making [the album] and also with all the speculation and the amount of pressure we had been dealing with through the entire process … it's a relief to finally have it out."

But then, time was when to be the New Something actually meant something. The New Smiths (Suede), The New Nirvana (Radiohead), The New Radiohead (Coldplay) were track-stopping tags thrown up every couple of years to mark the entrance of something significant. In 2009, you have two choices: you are either the New Vampire Weekend or the New MGMT. And rest assured: you'll be vying for the position with 20 other bands and/or will have been forgotten by the time the end of the festival season swings around. Such is the fate of most so-called "blog buzz bands". A phenomenon once deemed the most liberating force within the music industry, the blog was the word-of-mouth, power-tothe- people, level playing field, here to call time on out-of-touch major labels and conceited radio controllers, by allowing real-life music fans to champion the best new talent out there. Well, that was the idea anyway.

"Frankly, the people who write on blogs are the lamest people to have at your show," sighs Michael Angelakos, singer in November 2008's New MGMT, Passion Pit. "I have almost completely shut off my computer, because if people are going to be mean to anyone in this band, they're going to be mean to me."

Eight months ago, Passion Pit were the most celebrated blog band in America. Now, Angelakos can't enjoy a Google Alert update without having to sift through a flurry of personal attacks and death threats. What happened? Did Passion Pit fail to deliver on their early promise? Make a debut album that sounded like a totally different band to the one who first posted those MySpace tracks? Nope, they just signed to a major label and looked like they might be about to enjoy a modicum of real – as opposed to virtual – success.

"It's brutal," smiles Passion Pit's drummer Nate Donmoyer, sitting next to Angelakos in the Whole Foods Store in the Bowery area of Manhattan, having just finished a soundcheck. Donmoyer says he's able to laugh off the posts from people wanting to slowly torture his singer, or declare Chairlift far superior to them. It's the ones that joke about suicide that he finds harder to stomach. Like this from someone called "faas" on the influential Stereogum website, last month: "any more passion pit posts and my mother is going to walk in on me with a gun in my mouth listening to 'sleepyhead' screaming 'what the fuck are you doing!? don't kill yourself listening to THIS shit!'."

"He has a good sense of humour. I don't," says Angelakos, pointing at Donmoyer. "I try so hard to be like, 'Ha ha ha! They're just joking' … but it's still there."

"We've had to get tough and thick-skinned," adds Donmoyer. "That took time."

Indeed. Most bands weather the hype machine hypocrisy by blocking out the bad and becoming raging egomaniacs. But for Angelakos – a more sensitive frontman than your average Tom Kasabian – the rollercoaster of vicious lows and vertigoinducing peaks proved too much. In April, Passion Pit announced they would be cancelling their forthcoming European and Canadian dates, citing a "personal situation at home". The blogs, always keen to blow a little hyperbole into any situation, were awash with rumours that the pressures had caused the "crazy genius" Angelakos to crack; that he had unexpectedly gone awol leaving his bandmates with no alternative than to put the planned trip on ice. Today, with a sold-out headline set at the Bowery Ballroom in two hours' time, Angelakos is keen to underplay the events.

"Yeah, I needed to take a break. [But] everything was fine. People take days off, that was my day off ," he shrugs. "I don't really consider myself a very road-ready kid, so I needed time to make sure I could do it the right way, because we have a lot of people banking on us at the label."

When Angelakos uses the word "kid", he's not exaggerating. He and Nate were 21 when they wrote and recorded their debut album, Manners, and cancelled a tour for the first time. Now, at the ripe old age of 22, they are busy reacquainting themselves with why it was they wanted to be rock stars in the first place.

Passion Pit accidentally came into being in late 2007 when Angelakos forgot to buy his girlfriend a Valentine's card and thought he'd make up for it (some six months later) by writing her a few glucose-loaded, dancefloor jams called things like Cuddle Fuddle and Sleepyhead instead.

Because he was feeling "very manic" at the time, and because this was just a cutesy, romantic gesture that no one else was going to hear, he decided to sing all the songs in a shrill, piercing castrato. After his girlfriend persuaded him to play it to a few friends art Emerson College, Boston, who in turn persuaded him to try performing the songs live, he was approached by keyboardist Ian Hultquist, who persuaded him to try putting a full band together. Angelakos was reluctant – "because I wasn't completely sold on the music" – but eventually acquiesced. The Valentine's gift found its way onto MySpace as the Chunk Of Change EP … and that's pretty much where we came in.

Angelakos has previously admitted writing the Chunk Of Change EP while very depressed. Is it a state of mind he finds conducive to writing?

"Actually, kind of. Believe it or not, I'm not the most positive person I know and that just seems to be a running theme; it's just very unhappy," he smiles/frowns. "But I guess what we wanted to do was to make a record that was really uplifting and juxtapose it with the lyrics."

"Look at me, oh look at me/ Is this the way I'll always be?/ Oh no, Oh no", goes the euphoric, disco-pop chorus of The Reeling. Like the rest of the album, it was recorded in the middle of a harsh New York winter, with Angelakos and Donmoyer so broke that they had to share a double bed ("I'd wake up to him playing piano on my butt cheeks and he would literally say, 'Someone's got to write the songs,'" Donmoyer laughs.)

Back for the New York summer, Angelakos seems a stronger character than the disorientated, fragile mind responsible for Manners' lyrics. "It was the first time I decided to really take a good look at myself," he explains.

"It's a record about growing up really, just coming to terms with who I am." But what if Hulquivist had never persuaded Angelakos to form Passion Pit? Then who would he be? Seeing as his band has spent so much time living in a virtual universe, let's imagine what might have happened if they'd grown up in a parallel one, where Passion Pit had never happened.

Angelakos ponders the question for a few moments before finally answering. "I'd be in grad school being a research assistant in mass communications, probably criticising all the things I'm a part of now," he laughs.

Wait, wouldn't that make you …

"Oh God! You're right … I'd be a blogger."

Hmmm, wonder who he'd be tipping as the New Chairlift?

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