美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Hindrance Became The Power': Passion Pit's Angelakos On Music And Mental Health

(SOUNDBITE OF PASSION PIT SONG, "THE UNDERTOW")

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Michael Angelakos started Passion Pit a decade ago out of his dorm room at Emerson College. He's released four albums and also become known for his involvement in mental health. His latest album out now is "Tremendous Sea Of Love."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDERTOW")

PASSION PIT: (Singing) Come to me honey and feel the warmth around you grow. Calls from above me echoes down below. We've resorted to the undertow. I try, but what you're feeling is the undertow.

SIMON: Michael Angelakos joins us now from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: How did you find music?

ANGELAKOS: My dad recalls me singing in, like, perfect pitch when he was changing my diapers. And my father was a music teacher.

SIMON: (Laughter) Well, all of us fathers do that. But it's rarely true, you know?

ANGELAKOS: You know, I...

SIMON: Our daughters recited Shakespeare when I was changing...

ANGELAKOS: (Laughter).

SIMON: ...When my wife was changing their diapers.

ANGELAKOS: You know what? My parents are - my father being a musician - and he was a music teacher for, like, 15 years in public schools and everything. When his son suddenly becomes a professional musician - and, you know, you were always trying to be a musician - he's not, you know, the one who's going to just give me that for free, which - I love my father. You know, I love him to death. But it just naturally came to me. It was one of those things where, you know, they tried to pay for lessons. And I would go to lessons, and I'd get my hands slapped or - you know, because I just didn't understand why I needed to learn other people's music when I could just write my own. And I also just thought that with my obsession 1 with the Beach Boys around 4 or 5, I thought they had annual tryouts. I thought they had, like, yearly tryouts. And so I was like...

SIMON: Oh, to be in the Beach Boys, you mean?

ANGELAKOS: Yeah. I just wanted to be a Beach Boy, really. And I thought, you know, I would impress them if I wrote songs. So I was a little bit of a brat 2. But I - it was encouraged. My family was very kind about allowing me to sit in my room. And I recorded over all my dad's tapes. I wreaked 3 havoc 4. But at the end of the day, you know, they nurtured 5 a songwriter. And that was really all I ever wanted to be.

(SOUNDBITE OF PASSION PIT SONG, "FOR SONDRA (IT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME)")

SIMON: Let's listen to one of the songs. This is "For Sondra."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOR SONDRA (IT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME)")

PASSION PIT: (Singing) Darling, I know that you still take care of me. It means the world to me. And my life sways back and forth 6 like light from above. It's true. Now we both can see.

SIMON: May I ask, who's Sondra?

ANGELAKOS: Sondra Radvanovsky, the opera singer. And I've met a lot of famous people in my life. But the - one of the only people who made me cry when I - upon meeting them, like, just freaking out was Sondra. Opera was something that I was introduced to very young. It was a thing that I shared with people I'm very close with, that I've had to go through a lot with. And something think about that night - meeting Sondra and everything - just brought the women in my life to a place where, I mean - I have - I'm just really grateful to my mother and my wife, my grandmother, all these people that I just didn't know how to talk about, really.

SIMON: This song lets you do that - talk to them?

ANGELAKOS: Yeah. You connect it to something - like a memory like that. It kind of allows you to access a certain place that is - I don't know - it's something that I remember thinking. At that time, I was like, I missed everybody. When I met Sondra, I missed everyone because at the time, I was blaming lots of people for problems that are just impossible to explain. They're in my head.

SIMON: Well, what does that mean?

ANGELAKOS: Well, I have bipolar 1 disorder 7 - rapid cycling - with anxiety. I have PTSD. And what I've always been doing with my music, even though at certain points I just denied it flat out - it was just a way of explaining it sonically. And I just wanted to hear what it sounded like - what my bipolar disorder sounded like. And it would sound like - to me, I always like the underdog winning or something like that (laughter). And that's been my life - is really just trying to explain and apologize and work through this illogical world in my head that has actually been - it's been like running with weights. But no one can see the weights. And suddenly, at a certain point, you've lived through it. And that's one thing that I started realizing. It was, like, the hindrance 8 became the power.

SIMON: The hindrance became the power.

ANGELAKOS: So with my illness, I started realizing, like, as a mental health advocate that everyone's going to deal with melancholia. Everyone is going to deal with anxiety, grief - so on and so forth. But how you walk through them is important because you could develop something very serious.

SIMON: Yeah.

ANGELAKOS: And I care deeply because when I was sexually molested 9 - and what happened when I did not go to counseling when I was 12, 13, 14 years old - what happens - when you're in your 20s, these things develop bad behaviors that look like choices. But they become treatment, self-medicating, things that are really, really dangerous.

SIMON: I don't want to lose sight of your album because it's good music.

ANGELAKOS: (Laughter).

SIMON: Point us to a song you'd like us to hear.

ANGELAKOS: I think a song I love is "Hey K."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEY K")

PASSION PIT: (Singing) Hey K, I'm fine. Just tell him what you need. You can run. I'll hide. Still, we end up on our knees. K, I swear just try and tell him what you need. Feel him emanate 10 and never again feel weak.

ANGELAKOS: A lot of my music has been about my wife and my life with my disorder and how much we went through. And, you know, you're a hormonal 11 nightmare as a male in your 20s (laughter). And you're just going through a lot on top of having a disorder and having to be at the center of attention the whole time. And, like, it's a giant miscommunication. But at a time when I just couldn't connect with her, I was manic. And a lot of people - when you're manic, you just, like - you have to really quarantine yourself. And so we weren't talking. But I just - through this music, I was able to kind of speak to her and say something along the lines of, don't forget that this entire - my entire life and everything that I'm doing, all of the, you know, work I'm doing now is because I'm also trying to protect you. I'm going to actually try to do something instead of just talk.

SIMON: Michael Angelakos of Passion Pit. Proceeds from his new album "Tremendous Sea Of Love" go to benefit the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. Thanks so much for speaking with us.

ANGELAKOS: Thanks so much for having me.