The Passion of the Pit

Here's a blog about something I didn't intend to blog about and have probably talked about too much (but perhaps cannot talk about enough)--Passion Pit. 

By now if you don't know who Passion Pit is than you must have certainly been living under an internet rock (or real world rock, depending on who you ask) for the past year, but maybe this is a take you haven't heard before.

When I knew Michael Angelakos (though he looked much more like this one), he was making every freshmen (and probably upperclassmen) girl's heart flutter as he walked around our high school campus, turning a simple beanie hat into a fashion item/sex symbol and charming us all with his offbeat comical displays at morning meetings. My most memorable experience with Mr. Angelakos would be the time spent with him during our school's production of "the Scottish Play" (actually, it would be the morning I was at my locker, felt a tap on my shoulder, turned around to see it was him congratulating me on making my first speech ever at morning meeting, smiling, then gracefully walking down the hall into the sea of students, who were for some reason moving in slow motion, as I tried to regain my breath.....you get the picture; I was a freshman). He had the role of Duncan and I was the Sergeant with the long speech in Act I Scene 2. What I think of, in retrospect, is sitting in rehearsal one day, watching the opening of the play and hearing this utterly disturbing music come on followed by this striking high-pitched falsetto. It was creepy, but extremely unique and it worked with the scene and eerie ambience of the play.  When I asked Lulu, the stage manager, where we got this from I was shocked to hear that all of it was Mike.

Less than a year ago,  Lulu again introduced me to some more of Mike's music, this time in the form of a little known band from Cambridge, MA known as Passion Pit. I liked it, and a few local shows, CMJ music festival, MTV Spotlight, Columbia Record's deal, big time tours with big time artists, first EP, and headlining tour later....so does everyone else. You see not much has changed with Mike: he's still making our hearts flutter, adorable, and surprising as well as moving us with his music. This time however he's not just playing to freshmen girls and high school theatres, but to an international audience, impressing hundreds of bloggers and the Rolling Stone along the way. A few days ago, a sold out Mohawk Place and myself welcomed Mike back home (his real home, NOT Cambridge, but Buffalo) and I recorded this live version of Sleepyhead. However, what really inspired me to write this blog are the numerous covers and youtube videos I found connected to the one I posted.  Just as the name suggests, Passion Pit impassions everyone who listens to them; they encourage creativity, they encourage people to grab their guitars and/or to string their vocal chords with the same unbridled fervor Angelakos's magical falsetto rings through their headphones, and finally they encourage people to feel the passion, to give themselves up to the uncontrollable outbursts of emotion and energy you'll find at a Passion Pit show, and to explode--floating in a million pieces in and out of everyone in the crowd, on stage, and the synthetic beats and tingles swerving under the high pitched yelps and children's choir in songs like The Reeling, Make Light, Moth's Wings, and practically all of Manners. From a local perspective, Passion Pit fills everyone with a beaming pride to have taught, acted, or shared the same lunchroom, quad, or city with Mike Angelakos.

In all honestly, and as it is with the most emotional of things, I cannot truly capture the essence of all this in words, and have pretty much embarrassed myself (God I hope his younger brother and his family somehow skip the beginning of this) trying. So, I leave you with some videos and these words of advice: If you want to be reminded that you're living--go see Passion Pit live. And feel the Passion.

Here's a charmer:

This guy is clearly just feeling it for himself and sharing it with the world:

This kid is pretty good; A sleepyhead cover:

This is the best cover I've seen so far, kudos to Run toto:

O0o, art project from Argentina:

the beanie returns:


Ah, These guys give it their all: