Michael Angelakos provides an unexpected answer to the very first question. "Thank you so much for wanting to talk about something other than bipolar," he says with a laugh to an opening query about Passion Pit's new album Kindred.
There are, it would seem, some questions which have come up again and again and again as the frontman goes out to talk up the third album.
It's to be expected. A few weeks after Passion Pit released their last album Gossamer in 2012, Angelakos talked at length in an interview about depression, suicide, drug abuse, family problems and living with bipolar disorder, which he'd been diagnosed with as a teenager.
Those frank admissions coloured that campaign and subsequent tour and it’s clear that they’re still a theme, as a lot of what Angelakos has to say references his struggle with illness.
"My life changed a lot during the making of this record which means I'm seeing things a lot differently", he says. "Things don't need to be so complicated – if they're going to be more complicated, I should at least make them more palatable and polished as opposed to arduous and difficult as they were before. I pushed and trudged through Gossamer as opposed to gliding through Kindred. This was kind of a release and a relief."
Certainly, Kindred sounds like a serious bout of catharsis, with Angelakos working through his emotions and the impact his illness has had on his life and those around him. Like previous albums, that darkness and raw lyrical content comes packaged with saccharine pop highs and a wild wash of sweet, slick synths.
“It’s very honest music both lyrically and musically,” reckons Angelakos. “What you’re hearing is how I think. But a writer is only as good as an editor sometimes and I’ve learned over the course of time what to keep and what to discard. Ultimately, I learned with this record that it’s more about the quality of the sounds and making sure that you can hear them better.”
Angelakos the producer had to learn how to let those songs breath.
“As a producer, one humongous step has been to find a way for the songs to come across better and for me to get out of the way of the song as a singer. I love that the lyrics are immersed in the song and so sound like a song and are not sitting on top of this massive ocean of sound. It’s proper songwriting, which is new in a way for me.”
Sonic trickery
That said, Angelakos still could not resist packing his tracks with lots of sonic trickery.
“I was talking to someone earlier and was trying to explain about why I feel bad when I have to cut things out. I have an enormous amount of gear which can make incredible sounds and you want to fill every song with these noises.
“Usually, I layer and filter and EQ [equalise] sounds so that when I stack them together, you hear a really cool synth sound, but it’s actually eight digital keyboards as well a piano which has been processed through a tape player, sped up backwards and put on a sampler from the 1980s. Basically, I like taking the scenic route, which is fine.”
Angelakos knows that such overload is a natural side-effect of what he’s trying to achieve with his music.
"If you go through the stems on Gossamer or Manners and hear all the individual sounds, it's kind of heartbreaking, like 'why can't you hear these?' But there's no way you can hear them because there's 300 or something tracks in the mix.
“When you have all these emotions and ideas spewing out of you because the project calls for that kind of engagement, that overload is naturally going to happen. The project is a weird kind of therapy for me as a producer and musician.”
When he listens back to Gossamer, he just hears the pressure he was under at the time.
"It's not that I was unhappy with the records, but there was always so much more that I could have done and that's all I hear. With Gossamer, there was a gun to my head because I was really, really, really behind. I'd a good excuse – I was sick – but it was threatening my career. If I didn't come out with a record, I'd have been starting from scratch and I had to keep that in mind.
“But I know it’s like that for everyone. You have a deadline for a piece of writing and you hand it in and you always think what you could have done if you’d another few days.”
Songwriter for hire
Away from Passion Pit and between albums, Angelakos found himself working as a producer and songwriter for hire with Madeon and Ryn Weaver. It’s something he enjoyed because it gave him perspective about what he really wants to do.
“I got approached about Ryn Weaver after working with Benny Blanco for a while. I met Benny one day, started making music and became close friends. He came to me and said he’d got this project and label and that the girl was really cool and that we should be a team and work on it.
“This was really what I wanted to do. I felt when I was at my darkest that Passion Pit was the only thing happening and so it became this obsession because it was all I had. Ultimately, I want to be a writer and producer because I don’t know how much longer I can be in the spotlight.
“As we got bigger and bigger, I realised that more and more. I mean, Passion Pit is not superstar big but it’s still a lot and I didn’t expect it. When you work with other people and work on their projects, you have this opportunity to make things more interesting, weirder and exciting, which is all I ever wanted. It’s like I’ve been practising for everyone else by doing Passion Pit. I love pop music and that’s what Passion Pit is – strange and weird and awkward, but pop music.”
Those other projects will take a backseat for now as Angelakos takes Passion Pit, Kindred and the back-catalogue on the road. The touring around Gossamer was a little chaotic due to the singer's health issues, but it's different this time out.
“I’ve never been so excited to tour,” he enthuses. “In all honesty, I’ve been very wary of touring. It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to make a new record, but I realised I just had to find a way to make the live show work and make it healthy. Now that we’ve done a few shows, it feels like 2007 and 2008 all over again and that’s great.”
Kindred is released today on Columbia Records
