Passion Pit saved "Sleepyhead," their most well-known single, until the encore of a concert that felt more like a basement frat party than an intimate college concert.
If the best part of a concert was playing Uno on the bus ride there, you know the concert was a bit of a bust. On the night of Saturday, Sept. 11, I attended Passion Pit’s concert in the gym of SUNY Brockport. The concert was part of the band’s Campus Conscious Tour, which, as the name alludes, is entirely made up of campus venues throughout the United States.
But Passion Pit, I ask you, why SUNY Brockport?
The concert took place in a small gym with black tarp thrown down on the floor, making it feel more like someone’s basement house party than an actual concert.
Furthermore, it wasn’t even filled to maximum capacity. I was standing up near the front, so the lack of concertgoers wasn’t immediately apparent to me; however, upon turning around sometime in the middle of the show, I noticed that the audience was only about 15 rows deep, if that.
The euphemistic phrase for this sort of concert would be “intimate.”
To give the band some credit, they were extremely full of energy and seemed to be truthfully feeling their music.
Lead singer Michael Angelakos was also fairly interactive with the crowd, as he continuously ran up to the edge of the stage and bent down toward the audience to establish eye contact, making the songs feel more personally directed.
Although, the downside of this energy was that it made all of their songs essentially run together. Any differences in energy that may have been found on the recorded versions of their songs were lost in the live performance, resulting in nothing more than a big synth-y mess of general loudness with a few percussion lines thrown in.
I honestly couldn’t tell which songs were being played at what point throughout the concert. Eventually, it all sounded like one long, indistinguishable, continuous song.
What I can tell you, however, is that they unwisely chose to save “Sleepyhead,” their most recognizable song, for their last encore number.
Yes, that’s right, encore number. They didn’t even include the song with the widest appeal in the main lineup for this concert.
I know I wasn’t the only one who was surprised by this, as throughout the concert — and increasingly toward the end — the audience began to chant ‘Sleep-y-head! Sleep-y-head!’ with a few individuals screaming out “I’m so sleepy!” as not-so-subtle hints.
Unfortunately, the band didn’t seem to pick up on it.
Their other well-known and popular tracks, “The Reeling” and “Little Secrets” were also played, but again, too far into the concert than they should have been.
The overall effect of the band’s bizarre choice of lineup was that the show felt more like a chance to jump up and down to some synthesized indie pop in the midst of a sweaty mob, than an opportunity to see a great band perform the well-thought-out concert their songs deserve.
Passion Pit almost became background music at a party, rather than the main event. I’ve been told that Passion Pit is a great live band, but this concert just didn’t do it for me. Perhaps it really was because of the venue, making it seem small-scale in a lame way, or perhaps it was because I saw an outstanding Vampire Weekend concert the night before, resulting in some uncalled for comparisons.
Whatever the reason, I think I’ll stick to obsessing over Passion Pit via my iPod.
Sklar is a member of the class of 2014.
