Michael Angelakos may sing in a wild falsetto, but like Rush’s Geddy Lee and other pop-rock castrati before him, he has a perfectly normal speaking voice.
Angelakos, lead singer of Passion Pit, says that the singing voice he uses in the band developed out of the necessity to find a sound that stood out against the music’s rainbowcolored dance beats, synth and keyboard lines. “[The voice] cut through the music,” Angelakos says, explaining that the vocal is more of a character than a reflection of his normal singing voice. “He’s really a baritone,” jokes keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy.
Passion Pit now consists of Angelakos, Al Adhamy, guitarist Ian Hultquist, bassist Jeff Apruzzese and drummer Nate Donmoyer, all guys in their early twenties, who met through mutual friends as college students in Boston, Mass. But Passion Pit’s roots rest with Angelakos, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., who attended Emerson College. Back in late 2006, he started writing and recording songs on his laptop under the moniker Passion Pit. By April 2007, he had finished a collection of songs that he presented to his then-girlfriend as a belated Valentine’s Day mix.
What was intended as a tender love note between co-eds began circulating around Emerson and the nearby Berklee College of Music, where the rest of Passion Pit’s future members went to school.The mix became a hit on the Boston college circuit, and the band played its first show in November 2007 at Emerson. Angelakos’ infamous mix went on to gain fans beyond Boston a year later when it was released as the Chunk of Change EP in September 2008.
Angelakos began Passion Pit as a solo project and only extended the invite for additional band members after he had completed the mix. And contrary to rumors, Angelakos’ selection of the band’s name was not based on a 1980s porno. “[Passion Pit] was a term for the drive-in movie theaters in the ‘50s, where the kids would make out,” he says, and the connection to the skin flick only “came to our attention later on.”
The group’s EP was a no-frills venture, “made solely by me on my laptop,” Angelakos says. Passion Pit’s debut LP, Manners, opened up a chance for the music to be re-imagined for a full band for the first time.The band operated with a larger pool of resources for the LP, adding guitar, bass and drums to the synth and sample mix. Passion Pit even got some vocal assistance from the children’s choir at New York’s P.S. 22. Angelakos had written some of the music with children’s voices in mind, and during the search for a choir, the band connected with P.S. 22 at the suggestion of Chris Zane, the producer of Manners.The entire choir came to Gigantic Studios for a lively day of recording in January 2009. “They got a day off from school, so that was cool,” Angelakos says.The choir spent the day practicing and recording the chorus of the song “Little Secrets,” and, despite the fact that the elementary school kids were stuck in the same room all day, Angelakos says, “They were so unbelievably professional.”
Angelakos never intended to use Manners as a means of discarding the core sound he originally established for the band, but by taking advantage of additional resources this time, he did hope to create “a piece of work that stood on its own.” He says this was his only real intention for the album, and that this time around, he wasn’t writing the music with any recipient in mind. “I don’t think I’m ever going to write another album for someone,” he says.
But as Al Adhamy says, regardless of the motives behind an album or different types of additional sounds, “Passion Pit is always going to sound like Passion Pit,” something he credits to the instrumentation and even more so to Angelakos and “that voice.”
> Passion Pit
June 19 & 20, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; 8, $16/18, SOLD OUT.
