Passion Pit at the Mann Center gets bodies moving, despite the heat

Temperatures were lingering in the upper 80s when Passion Pit took the stage of the Mann Center Sunday night. The artificial fog rolling off the stage mingled with saturated outdoor air and the evaporated sweat rising from thousands of bodies.

But somewhere during their set, the skies opened up, loosing just enough rain to let the show continue without danger of heat stroke - or, the possibility, nearly as ominous, that the bouncing, jerking figures in the crowd might slow down.

The rhythm of tension and release is key to Passion Pit's appeal. Originally a dorm-room project of singer Michael Angelakos, the five-piece band's songs build skeletal frames that blossom into a starburst of colors. The accompaniment to the verse of "Make Light," which opens their debut album, Manners, consists mainly of a single repeated bass note and a drum beat alternating between kick and snare. But when the chorus rolls around, the song explodes into a riot of sixteenth-note guitar and dive-bombing synthesizers. It's a pattern made for the dance floor, where ecstatic abandon pauses just long enough for you to catch your breath.

It's also a sound that belongs indoors, not in an outdoor amphitheater where rows of seats prevent the communal mingling of bodily fluids. Or so it might have seemed beforehand. "We've never played a venue like this before," Angelakos acknowledged early on.

But any worries he might have had were washed away early on. The seats in the stands were barely used, and dancing bodies filled the spaces between rows. "This is ridiculous," said an awestruck Angelakos. "We played the basement of a church last time."

With only one album and a previous EP to choose from, Passion Pit played the bulk of its extant discography, throwing in a cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams" for good measure. Their straight-faced version had a nostalgic tinge, which might seem premature for a song that dates back only to the early '90s. But to this crowd, most of whom looked to be a few semesters shy of graduation, it was a golden oldie.

Tokyo Police Club, the Newmarket, Ontario, quartet who opened the show, are more straightforward in their debt to the past. Mixing the drawling vocals and nervous rhythms of The Strokes with the guitar drones of shoegaze, they tip their hats to their influences but rarely transcend them.