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Monday, June 8, 2009
Interview: Passion Pit
(Passion Pit at Emo’s in March during South by Southwest. Photo by Benjamin Sklar/For the American-Statesman)
Boston-based indie pop group Passion Pit have had a big year. Feeding on momentum from last year’s much-hyped EP, they released their debut full length, “Manners,” in May to critical acclaim, selling more than 10,000 copies in the first week and landing the band a spot at No. 51 on the Billboard Top 100 album chart. They are in the middle of a non-stop tour that includes sold-out dates in the United States and Europe. They’ll also perform at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. We caught up with Passion Pit drummer Nate Donmoyer and keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy before their recent sold-out show at Emo’s.
American-Statesman: You’ve been selling out shows across the country. Why do you think people are so excited to see you?
Adhamy: People tell them to be excited. We have a really awesome publicist. It’s a word of mouth or word of Internet thing. It’s nothing we’re doing.
Donmoyer: … It’s our first tour through a lot of these towns so it’s still a litmus test, an ‘are these guys worth our time?’ kind of thing. It’ll be a few more tours before they’re actually here to see us.
Adhamy: We met these two girls yesterday in Dallas that said they were doing a Passion Pit Texas tour, coming to all three shows (Dallas, Austin and Houston). I’m really humbled by that.
Donmoyer: They don’t have jobs, so they can follow us around.
‘Manners’ sold more than 10,000 copies in the first week it was released. Were you surprised?
Adhamy: Floored, absolutely floored.
Donmoyer: I was expecting maybe 500.
Adhamy: I had friends e-mailing me, and they were like, oh my god, you’re in the billboard top 100.
Donmoyer: It’s some alternative reality we just clicked into.
Adhamy: We just graduated college and we’re still kids.
Donmoyer: It’s like what’s wrong with the world? Because why would we be in the top 100?
Adhamy: Actually, I disagree, because Eminem is No. 1. If he’s No. 1, then I don’t want to be No. 1. Eminem’s going to hate us now.
What have been listening to while on tour?
Adhamy: One of my favorite things is napping and waking up and seeing Nate driving to classical music and violin concertos. We all have music degrees so we’re pretty knowledgeable about that kind of thing.
Donmoyer: The new Phoenix album has been on repeat for like four months. We wish we made it.
How have you adjusted to the Texas heat?
Adhamy: I grew up in the Middle East, so I would expect to be used to it, but no, I never got used to it. It never gets comfortable. Except there, I can’t walk outside in my glasses. Here I can wear glasses, but it’s so sticky and warm when you’re setting up and carrying gear. It’s good exercise, though.
Donmoyer: In Boston you can drink and it’s freezing, so you don’t really notice. Here it’s four beers and you’re lucky if you don’t pass out on stage. That’s what happened during SXSW. I basically passed out.
Adhamy: I came straight from England (to SXSW) and was kind of stressed out, so when I flew in that morning I said, ‘This is glorious, I’m going to have a whiskey. I’m going to have four whiskeys!” Then you start eating and you have to set up, and the stage was makeshift out of balsa wood or something, like a trampoline. The laptop fell like seven times, keyboards fell, the bassist got hit in the face with the microphone.
Did you have time to see any other bands during SXSW?
Donmoyer: Grizzly Bear. My girlfriend lives in Dallas and she came down. It was the one band we wanted to see, and there were 300 people in line. I thought, what a terrible end to our time at SXSW, sitting outside waiting. I looked at my wrist, at my artist pass, and told the bouncer ‘I’m playing right now, I’m in Grizzly Bear,” and they were like “Oh yeah yeah yeah,” and they cleared a path an everyone just walked to the front of the stage and we watched the whole set.
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Review: Animal Collective at Stubb’s
By any reasonable measure, Animal Collective has hit it big with a certain strain of experimental pop music.
The Brooklyn-via-Baltimore trio sold out Stubb’s days after the concert was announced. Their newest album, “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” has sold more than 100,000 copies.
The Stubb’s crowd Friday night - part jam band fans, part Red River hipster kids, part frat-and-sorority looking folks and part parents waiting for the concert to be over to take their kids home - seemed pretty into every note, even maintaining a respectful silence (more or less) at the show’s quieter moments. This seemed no small feat considering just how chatty Austin crowds tend to be.
But it’s hard to think of a band this popular with a point of view this difficult to discern. Most of the music from members Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist was a gauzy electronic haze replete with sound effects, bent nature sounds and vague synths. Heavily reverbed vocals wandered in an out of the mix. The music was most effective when it was song-shaped or asserted itself rhythmically. Rave culture was very clearly part of the vibe, but chewy drums and techno blips kicked in too rarely. Too much of the set erred on the impressionistic; these guys were going to make you work for the meaning in their haze.
This is too bad: “Merriweather Post” has sold huge because of the stacked harmonies and ever poppier structures. This performance gave away or ignored too much of what makes the Collective individuals.
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Review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at Mohawk
Bonnie “Prince” Billy is nobody’s favorite musician. People don’t know the names of his albums. People don’t know the lyrics to his songs. They know him only as that guest musician on that other musician’s album, or as that oddball character in that indie film (he acts under his real name, Will Oldham), or merely as that wildly bearded, mysterious bald guy.
“Texas sweat is thin and insubstantial,” Billy said Friday at Mohawk, ensconced in humidity. He let on that he’s from Kentucky, which is so far from the epicenter of hip that it redefines the very term. “We Hoosiers bleed sweat,” he said.
Billy was speaking to a sold-out crowd that conveyed his widespread influence by virtue of the local musicians who comprised it. Bill Callahan. Christian Bland of the Black Angels. And siblings Black Nasty and Pink Nasty, both of whom have collaborated with Billy.
Six backing musicians—two drummers, the rest on guitar, violin, accordion and upright baby bass—swept Billy across the span of alt-country. They played only a couple of songs from his eminently accessible new album, “Beware.” Other songs were sparse and Gothic, with Billy, the consummate dramatist, waiting until the nanosecond before they fell apart in silence to deliver his lyrics. Other songs still were filthy and rocking, with Billy writhing his arms, hands, and head about in total communion with the music.
The tales he told were of virtue and sin, of the human condition, and of the complicated relationships between man and woman. One of them was “The Girl in Me.”
“There’s a girl in me,” Billy sang, “that makes me wear bright colors when I walk the streets.”
“There’s a man in me,” violinist Cheyenne Mize countered, “that wants to dominate you and put you in your place.”
If this particular song was any indication, there remained no mystery about it: Billy’s just down with his feminine side.
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