Interview: Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos

It’s been a wild year and a half for Passion Pit. In July 2012, the band returned to the fold with Gossamer, the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s breakout hit Manners. Like its predecessor, the album was filled with sweeping, hyper-electronic rock ballads and ecstatic synths. The arrangements were sparkly and bold but juxtaposed with pained lyrics about troubled families, troubled loves, and troubled pasts. It didn’t take long for critics to herald Gossamer, both for its production and its subject matter. Popular radio and Billboard chart topping followed soon after. But as stories of the record’s lengthy making began to surface, so too did the tales of frontman Michael Angelakos’s ongoing struggles, which included grappling with a debilitating bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts.

In the many months since, Angelakos has sought treatment, returned to touring, and, eventually, married the fiancée for whom Gossamer was penned. “She’s one of these humans that deserves to be written about in a really wonderful way,” Angelakos told Interview last year. “I just hope that I did that and her justice.”

He’s also become a vocal advocate for the open discussion of mental-health issues. “I’ve kept so much inside that I’ve literally lost it,” he told Pitchfork. “I wish more people would get help when they feel like they need it — and not just to look to medicine, but to the support of others.”