Passion Pit Reveal Their Little Secrets

All the bands who go down in history were making the right sound at the right time. In 2010, Passion Pit are one such band.

Whether by chance or design they play songs that are symptomatic of a new breed of synth pop that people across the globe have adopted as their party anthems.

This reception makes Passion Pit the perfect band for a festival such as Big Day Out.

Ayad Al Adhamy and Jeff Apruzzese, music makers since childhood, are determined to “bring the heaviness to the pop realm”.

Disappointed his interviewer wasn’t a dwarf, Ayad still relayed that, “We went to school with a Rastafarian dwarf who played drums” - it was music college.

“The only major you can do there is music. We get to hang out every day and learn music. It was in a city so you’d walk through the city to get to college so it was nice. In a music college there’s like every type of music kid possible. It’s so great.”

Ayad explains in more detail, “The singers are like the drama kids”, Jeff agrees: “The vocalists - oh those are like the divas”. Ayad’s instrument of choice used to be the guitar and he “had cool classes like Metal Lab…I like freaked out on this tour when I got to speak to the Mastodon drummer.”

Jeff is quick to dob his band mate in, “He totally nerded out around him. [imitating Ayad in a breathless voice] 'I was filming, the other day and then I got yelled at but I kept filming you' and he’s like, 'That’s cool. You can wipe the sweat off my eyebrows'.

Ayad makes sure to add that, “then we talked for a while”, and that he’s not alone in the freaking out over your heroes stakes. “I’ve done it like every day” admits Jeff.

Passion Pit’s Australian shows have been received more favourably than in the past, which is getting Ayad really excited.

“Literally, what’s so great, I’m really enjoying this, we spent all of last year in America trying to work on our live act and stuff. And they’re going 'They’re shit live' and then, it’s almost like 2010 started and everything changed.

Like everything, but nothing at all, I still play the exact same parts.” Jeff adds, “I don’t feel like I’ve changed. These past three weeks have been like the first time when people have been telling us how good we sound.”

Ayad explains how the live set up works: “We all play our parts and Nate also does the backing track, and controls a lot of the samples. With a live band to have an electronic drummer and to accent the snare with an electronic one just makes a huge difference. It’s way more complicated than people think."

The worst part of being in Australia is, “We don’t really know anyone. We hang out with ourselves all the time.” With Jeff adding that, “The jet lag was pretty bad. I was really sick when I got here. On our layover I had to get off because I was so sick.”

Jeff ended up being taken to the hospital. "They forfeited my boarding pass. They had to pull all of our gear off the plane and tell me whether I was safe or not to fly over. The first five or six days I was here I was awful."

Passion Pit have a new video coming out soon for their track 'Little Secrets'. If you’ve seen the one that looks like a screen saver - ignore it, it was released without their approval.

“It was a cool idea but it looked terrible.” The legit one was done by “the same director who did Battle's 'Atlas' video, which is a pretty cool video…It’s like a nice dark video for Little Secrets, which is kind of a poppy song. The main theme is that people are wearing bags on their heads and then they explode with happiness - it’s cool."

And surprisingly, Passion Pit know their Australian bands, such as “The Grates. We toured with The Grates a little bit.” When it was confirmed The Grates are big in their home country Ayad commented that “It’s amazing - they’re really nice people. We played some shows in Canada with them.”

Ayad rattles off everyone from Temper Trap to Ladyhawke which brings us to his message to Australians and New Zealanders.

“Get over yourselves guys, you’re one continent”. But when it comes down to it, “This is like the best tour of our lives so I can’t really complain. It’s really, really cool.”

Of the Sydney sideshow Jeff explains, “We’ve never been here before and to play a venue that big. I don’t think we were really expecting that sort of reaction.”

But the other cities have delivered too, “The gold coast reaction was like unbelievable” - enthuses Ayad. “There were like 80 people on shoulders. People were like hanging from the rafters and climbing up.”

Which brings up the question, do they think of their music as party music?

“Some of it, sure” concedes Ayad. “I think it’s being received more as that than what it’s intended to be” suggests Jeff. Ayad explains that they approach the festival gigs differently.

“When we do festivals we do like the party set, which is like 30-45 minutes of [clicks fingers in fast tempo]. But when we do a headline set we do all of them. The festivals we take out the slower numbers.” Regardless of what type of show it is though, right before they go on stage, the boys put their hands together and go, “Root scoot, root scoot, rooot scoooot!!!”. “It’s kind of weird. I don’t know why we do it.”

Oh, and one last parting insight, although Ayad contributes backing vocals he admits, “I actually do not know the lyrics. Literally I mumble the words. He supports this with a demo of how discernable words can descend into dribble. So if you were at the show commenting that, “The dude on the left looks like he doesn’t know the words”, you weren’t being overly critical, you were right.

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