In three short years, Passion Pit have gone from singer Michael Angelakos’ bedroom project to a band that has lived up to every ounce of blogosphere hype. They’re selling out large clubs all over the world, and are set to go on a 14-date run with Muse in September.

The band arrives at The Ritz Ybor on Monday, June 14, where Tokyo Police Club and BRAHMS play support for the nearly sold-out show. Tickets are $20 and available on Ticketmaster, Daddy Kool’s, or at the Ritz box office.

Reax caught up with bassist Jeff Apruzzes as he woke up in Richmond, Va., and spent 20 minutes talking about vinyl, playing bad shows, hangovers, and the nature of making a living in the BitTorrent age. We also touched on what it was like being the victim of a gastric anomaly.

REAX: You just waking up?
JEFF of Passion Pit: Sadly, yes.

REAX: Are you still on the bus with remnants of Elton John? Did he leave anything on there for you guys?
JA: You heard about our Elton John bus? No, I was looking for a pair of earrings or something — some star-glasses that I could take as memorabilia. Sheryl Crow had it before us, I didn’t find anything from her either.

REAX: Are you guys going to be hung over after Miami?
JA: (Laughs) There’s a possibility. I know we have an after party in Miami. Hopefully we won’t be in too bad a shape. We should be in good form. I think we used to party a lot more. We used to party all night on tour when we first started, but now we’ve realized that it makes it hell in a way, it just drags and it makes it impossible to play every night.

REAX: So you aren’t invincible. Live reviews have all said you guys kill your set, so what is a bad show for you guys like?
JA: Equipment breaks, going through the cycle when you play so many shows in a given period of time – something bad is gonna happen. It might be Mike’s voice. He sings in such a high and delicate range that if we do anymore than five shows in a row, then it’s so harmful to his voice, and we need time to recover. There have been times when his voice has been kinda blown-out in a way. There was a time of time and tribulation when we were figuring out how much we could actually do, and how much we could put our bodies through without us completely shutting down.

I mean when we first started, before we had to opportunity to have crew help us out, we would have equipment breaking down on us left and right on stage. Our laptop completely shutting down, and having to restart an Ableton session, which would take 20 minutes.

REAX: Speaking of crew, you’re obviously marketable and making a little money now. You haven’t make any qualms about cashing in on your marketability (re-releasing Manners, playing a show for Microsoft), but it seems like today’s fans are more open to the idea that bands have to eat, and aren’t as quick to scream “sell out.” Do you think that there is a line that can’t be crossed when it comes to art and commerce? Is there a line that you guys won’t cross?
JA: I mean I think anything that we do, we read the fine print and we kind of see what the final product is gonna be. We definitely still care about how people are gonna perceive us, and there definitely is a line that we won’t cross, so to speak. But on that same token, bands making less and less money from the record being sold opens up different revenue streams like advertising, syncing your songs, and different touring opportunities. I think people are more open to the idea as well because with the internet, a lot more people play music now and more people understand that there are more opportunities for artists to take, so I don’t think the whole “sell-out” thing is really pertinent anymore.

REAX: Some people probably think that you’re swimming in dough just because you’re rolling around in a tour bus and selling out 2,000 seat clubs. It looks like you’re living the good life, but what is it really like?
JA: Not at all, it’s kind of like a fake it till you make it sort of thing. Our band is completely self-sufficient, and has been for a very long time. I mean when we started… tour support is kind of like welfare. It’s like “If you’re too poor to be on tour, the label will give you money to go on tour.” But it’s not free money, it’s like “We’ll give you this money to get out there, but you have to pay us back.”

We were lucky with our first album on Columbia. We were able to get rid of our debt and start to be able to pay for everything ourselves. At this point I think it would be really, really hard for any of us to go tour in a van and go completely stripped down and have the opportunity to make a little but more money, because on the same token, we wouldn’t be touring as much as we are right now.

We pay for our bus ourselves and we pay for our crew. Essentially, we’re kind of investing in that and hoping everything else works out for the best. It lets us tour for a year and a half straight.

Even between tours we barely have enough time off before we start up again.

Like, we’re in the first week of a six-week tour right now, and then we have a week and a half off, then we go to Australia, Japan, Mexico, the UK, and them come home for a week and a half before we start off the Muse tour.

REAX: So have you had time to adjust to how quickly the band has been growing? You’ve only been around for about three years and the past year has been insane. Has it gotten any easier, or is everything that’s happening still pretty surprising?
JA: I personally am still surprised every night. I don’t think I ever want to come to complete terms with what the band is and how other people perceive it. It’s still amazing to me that we’re doing this, and that it’s actually happening.

We all just graduated college, and then everything just kind of skyrocketed so quickly. Life is great, I can’t complain right now. I’m enjoying being on tour with my friends and being able to play music every night.

REAX: So you’re all still in the “getting along with each other” phase.
JA: Yeah, it’s still the honeymoon right now.

REAX: In other interviews, Nate has said that music wasn’t all you guys ever wanted to do. Outside of the band itself, what opportunities has your success opened up as far as your long-term future goes?
JA: All of us had other projects going on, it has opened up various outlets for us, which is really cool. Through Nate I’ve started to DJ. I kind of learned from him and that’s something I’ve been really, really into lately.

I wouldn’t call myself a photographer – maybe an amateur photographer, but being on tour, I get to go to all these really beautiful cites and see all these beautiful landscapes that I’ve been able to capture. It’s cool because I’ve met local people who have galleries in New Jersey and I might have a few openings there when I come home, which is really cool and something that I never thought I would do, or really was possible.

Everyone has their own little various project going on. Like Ayad started his own label. He signed the Joy Formidable, who are great friends of ours who we brought on tour with us in the UK.

REAX: How is that working out for him?
JA: It’s going great for him. I don’t think it’s too much for him to handle, but I know he gets stressed out at points, being on the road and trying to balance his business while touring.



REAX: Are you guys working on anything new? Is Michael putting stuff together?
JA: Right now we’re just taking the touring and driving it home. We’re not really a band that’s gonna be working on a lot of material while we’re on the road. Just because of the nature of this band and how we do things. We’re not a guitar-based band, we’re not a band that’s gonna be on the bus with an acoustic guitar strumming out chords – that’s just not the nature of this band.

REAX: So, no Storytellers: Passion Pit coming up?
JA: (Laughs) Not yet. I think we need more than one album and a half to qualify for Storytellers.

REAX: How are the live versions of the songs themselves? How are they sounding to you from the stage? Are you guys tweaking them at all, are they still challenging, or are you getting into a zone?
JA: I feel like that’s kind of how we work on new material. We’re constantly revamping and re-tweaking our live set. We’ve done alternate versions of these songs over and over again, and finally within these past few months we’ve finally gotten into a resting area where we’re all comfortable with everything.

But even now, on this tour. We just did so many months with a very consistent set that was completely sequenced seamlessly through on out, and now on this tour we’re like, “Alright, we’re over that – we gotta change it around right now,” we programmed a new intro…and we’ve been touring a lot in the same market, so it sucks that we can’t be a band who can bring new material out like other bands, so we try to keep things interesting as much was we can while we’re on tour.

For us, it’s very taxing on all of us and we’re just trying to keep hold of it while we can and put on the best show that we can. That’s our goal for the end of the day. People are paying money to come see us, so we don’t want to just disappoint anyone or let anyone down.

REAX: So you’re not a “Fuck the crowd” kind of band?
JA: No! Where would we be without the crowd? We’d be back at our respective homes not having the opportunity that we have now.

REAX: Is there a song in particular that you are excited about playing live?
JA: I really like “Let Your Love Grow Tall”, but lately I’ve been really into playing “Swimming in the Flood” live because it’s a completely different mood than the rest of our set. The rest of our set can kinda be taken away as being very straight-ahead dance-rock, if someone’s gonna categorize us.

You know, the album goes through different emotions, and when we play that in the middle of our set it kind of just brings everyone back down to Earth in a way, kind of levels us out. I like just chilling out and playing that song.

REAX: What do you guys do when you’re waiting for the show to start?
JA: You know it depends. On the last tour, Nate was always looking for a record store to go to, and I would go to record stores and go vinyl shopping.

REAX: You need to go to Vinyl Fever here in Tampa.
JA: Vinyl Fever? Is that the spot to go to? On the last tour, I was with my girlfriend in L.A. and I went to this record store in Long Beach, and I found this Prince “Purple Rain” 45, and the disc was purple. “Purple Rain” is the b-side and it doesn’t even say anything on the sticker, it was just raindrops. I payed about 79 cents for it – I was pumped. It was definitely one of those crate-digging finds.

REAX: Okay, last question. What flavor were the farts you were ingesting earlier this week? What was that tweet about?
JA: (Laughs) Oh my God! I don’t know! That was like the worst week of my life and that was the end cap. It smelled like rotten egg salad – like someone had just left egg salad outside of their house in the middle of August for like a week and a half.

We were on a plane flying back from L.A. to D.C. We barely slept at all because we played Baltimore and D.C. with two after parties then three hours later flew to L.A. got there mid-afternoon, played at 2 p.m. the following afternoon, then flew out the next day at 1. We were all completely destroyed and tired, and then on the flight I have some, you know, relatively obese man sitting next to me, falling asleep, but doing the seizure sleep. Every time he would fall asleep his head would fall on my shoulder and his head would start to shake, so I was like “Okay, what’s going on?” Then it was the gas treatment for like four hours while he was sleeping – it was a constant stream. I had a migraine and it was a full flight, so I couldn’t move anymore.

REAX: Will you do us all a favor and just take a picture of him next time, so you can use Twitter for good?
JA: If I see him again I’ll post a picture so everyone can look out.

REAX: Alright, thanks a lot.
JA: Yeah, sorry I’m just waking up, still adjusting to daylight. I look forward to seeing you at the show.