Interview with Jeff Apruzzese of Passion Pit: It Pays To Have Good Manners

You’re full-length debut, Manners, just hit stores on May 18. Are you happy with the way it turned out?

Yeah, it just came out. We’re really excited that it’s available. We’ve been sitting on this record since January. We were like super excited and nervous and apprehensive and everything, and now we’re like overjoyed that people can have it and it’s like out in the public.

A lot of people have been waiting on this record and it seems like it’s received a lot of positive press so far.

Yeah, we’ve been really fortunate. The response for everything has been really positive right now which is great. We’ve been practicing a lot on getting our new live show together and recreating the songs live as they are on the record but not exactly to the tee, because a lot of what we harp on is we try and get our live shows to be different from the record and put in more exciting elements and change our arrangements around so the people coming to the shows are excited to see the live show.

What kinds of things have you added to the show?

Our shows are very high energy and like, for example, songs like ‘Live To Tell The Tale’ and ‘Better Things’ are changed around. We put new samples in to keep our listeners excited.

With all the samples and equipment you use onstage, is it difficult to recreate your sound live?

It was difficult at first because we had to try and figure out how we were going to recreate it, but after we were in rehearsal for a month and a half everything got a lot easier.

I’ve also read that even though the new album is very melodic and upbeat, its lyrics are very dark.

Yeah, I think that what makes the record so interesting is that as a whole the overall feeling is very melancholy. If you were just listening to the music itself and the melody it sounds very uplifting, but then if you go further into the lyrics and the content you’ll see it’s a lot more intricate than bubble gum and lollipop, it deals with really dark emotions.