Gossamer

Here's an incomplete list of the subjects dealt with on Passion Pit's second album, Gossamer: immigration, alcoholism, economic disparity, suicide, mental illness, drugs, domestic abuse. So when Michael Angelakos sings, "I'm so self-loathing that it's hard for me to see," that should come across like a tremendous understatement. But two lines later, he cries "no one believes me, no not a single thing." That part cuts deep, since Passion Pit's 2009 debut LP, Manners, was an often dark and troubled record a lot of people chose not to take seriously due to its sugar-smacked synth pop and countless product placements. So it's no wonder that Angelakos' next words are "my brain is racing and I'll feel like I'll explode!" Three difficult years in the making, Gossamer is an overwhelming album about being overwhelmed, a bold and ultimately stunning torrent of maximalist musical ideas, repressed anger, and unchecked anxiety.

Perhaps it's fitting that Gossamer, so focused on failure and human frailty, should begin with a stumble. "Take a Walk" is a fairly by-the-numbers Passion Pit song. Nonetheless, there's a strange imbalance to it. The massed chorus of chipper vocals and the stoic, pavement-pounding verse feel mismatched. And while Angelakos' literal account of the financial troubles facing his family is gut-wrenching and brave, it amounts to a curious fit on an album that's otherwise entirely personal. As a one-off, it would be an intriguing character study. As the leadoff track on Gossamer, it feels misplaced.

Luckily, "I'll Be Alright" doesn't allow much time for the disappointment to register. The joy-buzzer synths and Angelakos' falsetto scan as instant-gratification Passion Pit, but on both a musical and lyrical level, it's a raising of the bar, far more complex than anything the band has done to date. Consider the combination of its surging chorus and the synapse-frying barrage of microscopic jumpcuts, and you might have the weirdest and catchiest band on Warp, and the most dejected if you're really paying attention. The first line of "I'll Be Alright" could be a retroactive assessment on the day-glo Manners, asking "Can you remember ever having any fun?/ Cause when it's all said and done/ I always believed we were/ But now I'm not so sure." The effect is initially disorienting and uncomfortable: Do you escape into the comforts of the music or give into the lurid thrill of confrontation?

Angelakos is no pop subversive. While he's been forthcoming about the autobiographical details that inspired Gossamer, within the auspices of Passion Pit, he seems incapable of dealing with them through anything other than pop's pleasure principle. This was true of the now comparatively restrained Manners, an album of strong melodies that worked in a fairly narrow stylistic range. On Gossamer, Passion Pit recast themselves as polyglots and pacesetters, tackling the currency of pop music head-on as a competitor rather than admiring it with a few well-placed press quotes. Gossamer is rife with dichotomy, one of which is that the hooks highest in fructose are lent to songs dealing with the most uncomfortable topic: money. While "Carried Away" proves Angelakos might not be Ezra Koenig in terms of cleverly deconstructing the interactions between the socially stratified, there's a thematic congruence in the occasionally forced rhyme within a song about saying all the wrong things. Later on, "Love Is Greed" is far more multi-layered than its title and hook ("If we really love ourselves/ How do you love somebody else?") initially indicate. Courtship is reduced to the search of "another person that's just yours for the taking," which is essentially a trenchant distillation of post-recession social science.

Gossamer does have humor in its perspective, but surprisingly little joy. As the penultimate track, you might expect the rafter-reaching chorus of "It's Not My Fault, I'm Happy" to deliver some kind of relief amidst the litany of disappointments and misunderstandings, but this is a record about things not working out as expected. It leads into the disquieting calm of closer "Where We Belong", where the title is explained by a blatant suicide pact ("And then I'm lifted up/ Out of the crimson tub/ The bath begins to drain/ And from the floor he prays away all my pain"). Meanwhile, "Mirrored Sea" siphons M83's rocket fuel and throws everything in reverse, a paralyzing descent into realizing the impossibility of escaping the lingering failures of youth ("Slipups in this town are like a sentence to life/ Like overhead insults or a cheating wife"). The overload of digital shoegaze abates for the message of a dispassionate vocoder: "everyone's alone."

If only it were that easy. Were Gossamer simply played out in Angelakos' head, it would probably turn out insufferably self-obsessed and tuneless like so many other "difficult" second albums. Though it doesn't make Gossamer a happy record, Angelakos writes with a truly affecting ability to make unflinching acknowledgments of his demons' effects on those closest to him. A substantial portion of Gossamer is simultaneous love letters and apologies addressed to his real-life girlfriend, and naturally they're couched within Passion Pit's most complicated arrangements to date. "You never once controlled me/ When all the others told me/ That if I kept on going I'd be dead," he sings before the platinum-plated wallop of a chorus on "Cry Like a Ghost", an admission that takes on a menacing tone as the bridge finds him awake from a blackout ("She says I screamed and that I raised my hand/ I never meant to, I wasn't even there").

Beyond that brief bit of violence, the love songs are desperate and very, very drunk. Were a more composed R&B singer given the liquid slow-jam "Constant Conversations", the sophistication of Angelakos' melodic transitions might overshadow a devastating verse detailing a remorseful alcoholic's account of a tired partner emptying drinks and issuing ultimatums: "If there's a bump in the road, you fix it/ But for me, well I'd just run off the road/ But tonight you've got me cornered/ And I haven't got a place to go." It makes the context of "On My Way" almost unbearably intimate, Angelakos proposing, "we'll consecrate this messy love," in a voice overpowering the delicate music-box arrangement of bells and whirs with promises of a better tomorrow.

And is that ever a mission statement for a record of passionate reactions to a messy life. Angelakos puts so much of himself into Gossamer that it couldn't help but be riddled with all-too-human imperfections: Sometimes you wish he'd pick a cleverer lyric, tone down the falsetto, or at least realize that it might be in his interests to try to be cool for once. Because even though Gossamer could not be more overt in its exploration of profoundly adult and bleak topics, all some people might choose to hear is how most of the melodies could still sell children's cereal.

We expect this sort of masculine reckoning from the likes of Matt Berninger, Britt Daniel, Bill Callahan, Hamilton Leithauser; gaunt, brooding men whose vocal austerity and general presence convey authority and wisdom. "Let's not try and figure out everything at once," Berninger sang on "Fake Empire", and it was a comforting statement from a guy who sounds like he's figured things out.

But Gossamer's music is meant to reflect its sense of encroaching panic, where you really feel like you'll explode if you don't figure out everything at once. Angelakos sings variations on "I'll be all right" and "everything will be OK" throughout, but they're not so much reassurance as commiseration. It's unclear whether you're supposed to cry on his shoulder or vice versa, but it actually makes Gossamer more reassuring. Anyone can manufacture hope through a slogan, but there's an empathy and humanity that simply can't be faked as Angelakos tries to figure out how to stay atop his life. It's hard to think of a more noble goal for a pop album.