A WEEKEND with Passion Pit

Before the band’s show at the IU Auditorium on Saturday, Passion Pit bassist Jeff Apruzzese talked with WEEKEND about the upcoming show. The new dog owner (congratulations, Jeff) also gave a potential peek into the next album and talked about reading about himself and Taco Bell on music blogs.

WEEKEND: Passion Pit — where does the name come from?

JEFF APRUZZESE: It’s a slang term for in the ’50s when kids would go to the drive in, and when they were necking or making out, that was the term for it. It was called “passion pit.”

WKND: You guys just did a series of shows opening for Muse. Could you talk about what that was like? They’re such awesome performers. Did that change the way you guys approached your shows at all?

APRUZZESE: That tour was pretty insane. It was the most kind of organized chaos I’ve ever seen in my live. Everything was so scheduled and meticulous. It was like nothing we’d ever been a part of before. There were like 11 semi-trucks and six buses or so.

Their live show is incredible. From the get-go with us, we’ve been more accustomed to a headlining spot. This is only the second time we’ve supported someone. Even when we first got started we were headlining shows at maybe 200-300 person venues.

None of us had ever played in arenas either, so opening for a band of that magnitude and then playing on their stage, it was pretty intimidating at first. We were playing in front of their massive structures that they have. I know we were anxious about it, but I think we grew really. Once our confidence ensued, we felt more comfortable playing those spaces. It pushed us to play bigger spaces and play to the “back of the room.”

WKND: You guys were one of the bands that Taco Bell gave $500 in Taco Bell bucks. Have you had that yet?

APRUZZESE: No we haven’t. I don’t know how that happened. We always check the blogs, like Pitchfork and My Old Kentucky Blog, and it’s really bizarre when you see yourself on there with something you don’t know about.

Like “Oh, why are we getting $500 from Taco Bell?”

I guess our manager was approached about it, and he thought it was a good idea. But I’m ready. I’m ready to have an ultimate eating competition at Taco Bell.

WKND: What kind of music do you listen to on a day-to-day basis? Do you all listen to similar kinds of music?

APRUZZESE: Yes and no. There are a lot of similarities. Mike has me on a big Tom Petty kick lately. I’m late on this, but I’ve been listening to Edward Sharpe a lot lately. He’s amazing. I was just really excited to pick up the new Deerhunter record because I was a huge fan of Microcastle.

WKND: Are those the same bands that you draw inspiration from?

APRUZZESE: With every record there’s going to be a different underlying theme or motivation. Like “Manners” was very dancey. In the studio there was a lot of dance music or techno or house music being played and that played a huge role on the record.

Going into the next record it could be a complete departure from that. Like not necessarily doing away with all the dancey elements that made Passion Pit what it is, but we’re going to really strive to grow and mature and do something different and not just recreate the old record but maybe try to do something a little more organic and real. We’ll still contain a lot of synthesize and sequence stuff but drawing a lot more upon actual instrumentation of guitars and drums and horns and strings.

WKND: How did the Levi’s jeans “Tonight, Tonight” cover go down?

APRUZZESE: Well, all of us own way too many pairs of Levi’s as it is, so we said we’d do it. It was very open-ended in terms of what song we could do. The only problem was getting the artist to approve the cover. And as history has shown, Billy Corgan is not the most open guy to having other artists cover his songs and publicly release them.

But he was really awesome, and he actually really enjoyed the cover and was really adamant about voicing his opinion about how much he enjoyed it.

WKND: What are your future release plans?

APRUZZESE: For us, the touring entity of the band has been ruling our lives for the last two years now. And we all are in serious relationships with girlfriends, so when we come off tour, we’re not really wanting to get back and work again.

Since last January we’ve only had about six weeks off, so we’ve really been going at it. When we’re off tour we just kind of need to go home and hang out with our girls.
But we put an end date to the touring chaos on Dec. 31, so we’re going to take a few months off and start the new year fresh. I think we have secured some studio time over the summer, so we’ll see what happens.

It’s different than with “Manners,” which was so rushed because it was our debut, and we were still on the road. We actually learned those songs on the road too, so we had some really shitty shows for awhile.”

We’re not putting any marks down on when to get the album out though, because we have to record it first and also figure out how to play it live.

We really want to hit the ground running so that when we go out on the touring circuit we can be really polished and know what we’re doing.