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Riding a wave of excitement

Passion Pit
Riverside Theatre
Milwaukee, WI
April 3, 2010
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Story and photos by Matt Schwenke

Initially billed for the moderately-sized Turner Hall Ballroom, the psychadelic electro-pop group Passion Pit is riding a wave of excitement from their first two releases, which total just 16 songs, and were bumped up to the much larger Riverside Theatre and nearly sold it out.

Opening with "I've Got Your Number," from their 2008 debut Chunk of Change, the band seemed to take awhile to settle in sonically but the crowd response was overwhelming and propelled the band to an energetic ending almost against their will. With some of the fine-tuning taken care of, "Make Light," "Reeling" and "Little Secretes" pushed singer Michael Angelakos' teenage falsetto/shriek to great heights on a bed of dense keyboard wizardry by Ayad Al Adhamy and a healthy mix of children's choir samples.

Reaching out from their own catalog, Passion Pit reshaped the Cranberries tune "Dreams" into an electronic dance number that convincingly fit their mold. Nothing matched the response of the crowd, however, as that of Passion Pit's breakout hit "Sleepyhead" after announcing they would be back for Summerfest- the floor shook with the caffeinated beat as they ended their short but sweet show with the one song most in the crowd had been waiting for.

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