Animal Collective

illustration by Phil Dunne

Ten years ago the good ship Animal Collective began its musical voyage, embarking into a deep ocean of avant-garde noise, bubbling psychedelia and whirlpools of high-frequency delirium. Year by year, release by release these four adventurers sailed ever-closer to their eventual destination, distracted by an Odyssey-like saga of encounters- the Sirens of synths-pop, the many-headed monster of freak folk, the divine seductions of ethnomusical experiments. In 2009 the band finally sailed through their water curses and found themselves in the shallow waters of a sunny lagoon. Disembarking from his well-worn vessel, Admiral Avey Tare regaled us with his adventures, told us his itinerary, and what they make of their new environment- Oh, and didn’t they lose a man overboard?

Hey Dave. Dave or Avey? Do you have to be in character to do interviews?

Haha, Dave is cool.

First of all I have to give you a collective thanks from the people in Dublin who got to your last gig, I think it’s pretty much everybody who was there’s show of the year.

Oh man, that night was such a mess. By the time we finally got to the venue we were exhausted, but really psyched up to play as good a show as we could, especially since we had such bad luck the last time we came over when I was sick. We wanted to just get out of our minds, and get everybody else out of theirs too. We ended up getting an amazing energy from you guys, it was genuinely one of our highlights of 2008 too. We’re looking forward to coming back in March and making it up to all the people who’ve missed out so far though.

If that show was a high point of 2008, I think Merriweather’s already in contention for the defining musical happening of 2009…

Awh man, thanks, we’re so excited for it.

You’ve talked about your music being certain colours before- What colour do you think Merriweather is?

I guess I see at as two different groups of styles, two different groups of colours splitting the record. Overall we talked about it having a lagoon quality, like a shallow lagoon with lots of blues and greens, quite tropical and shimmering, anything you’d see in a coral. So we see a lot of it as having a blue-green quality, but then a bunch of songs are more earthy.

When I talked to Brian (Geologist) when Strawberry Jam came out he explained the relation of the texture of that album cover and the sound inside, on Merriweather were you trying to create an optical illusion sound?

I think that particular optical illusion reminded us of that aquatic feeling, the waves of it, the shimmering, and the sense of being underwater. That’s why were so partial to it and decided to use it.

The visual record you’re working on now, is that following the same line of effect?

That’s a collaboration with our friend Danny. The music and the film are really joined together, it’s a little more experimental. We want it to be really difficult to seperate the images from the music. Because of that it’s a sort of different experience, compositionally. It’s not very song-y, but it still sounds like Animal Collective. And there are a few sweet pop moments on it.

Talking about the aquatic sound, I thought Water Curses was about as wet as an album could get, but Merriweather takes it to a whole different level…

Hahaha, I know! We did too…

What is it about that echo effect that attracts you?

I dunno. I guess with Water Curses it was a little more predetermined. It was called Water Curses from a joke phrase that came up during Strawberry Jam when all these tragic events seemed to be happening with water. There was a flood in the studio, and we kept spilling liquid on stuff and things like this…

And it start seeping into the sound through the mic inputs?

Exactly! Everything we came up with started being like that, people would come up to us after shows and tell us it was like being underwater.

Is Merriweather a more electronic version of your more acoustic stuff, if you get me? Song-wise it’s a lot more along the lines of Sung Tongs, say, but it also sounds like your using more samplers and electronics.

Oh totally, we’re approaching an electronic album in an organic way. Even though we’re utilizing a lot of the samplers we want to gel with each other in a more natural way. Plus a lot of the sounds we’re sampling are acoustic instruments. Lots of string, guitar, drum samples. And I think the sound reflects that.

How does the album name reflect the music within it?

Well Merriweather is this venue in Maryland we’re all aware off from that we went to shows in when we were younger. There’s this rumour going around that we saw the Grateful Dead there when we were kids, we actually never did. I think the Dead were actually banned from playing there! The venue’s in a sort of planned community, and a lot of the community bands were from there and none of them liked the Dead at all. But the name signifies the ritual of listening to music outside. Merriweather has this really large lawn you can sit on and chill out during the music and enjoy the atmosphere. When we were younger and listening to some Neu! track or something with a big guitar solo we’d say “Man! This is so Merriweather!”. We often got into music that way, when we were younger, from just hanging out outside and listening to all kinds of new stuff. So we picked it because it had a really personal meaning but is about that communal feeling.

Do you think the album’s so Merriweather then?

I think it has this pretty epic quality. A lot of the early takes of our songs we noticed seem to come from the outside, or would descend on your, like ‘In The Flowers’. We also really liked that it had the word ‘weather’ in it, because we started attaching different weather patterns with the songs, tornadoes, hurricanes and tropical suns and stuff like that, since when we recording the weather was pretty drastic- We had to shut down the studio because of a tornado at one point.

Lyrically and musically speaking, a lot of Animal Collective’s stuff is always innately linked with nature. But, apart from Noah, you guys live in New York City. Is it sort of escapist that your songs are so set in this less man-made universe?

In New York sometimes you do forget you’re part of nature sometimes, and me and Brian are lucky in that we get out all the time to tour, and it is a breather to get out of the city. We’re lucky that we grew up in Maryland, which is where I guess a lot of that stuff stems from.

I read a preview from a big music magazine saying that Merriweather is a ‘landmark American album’… Do you think there’s anything distinctively “American” or representative of America in Animal Collective’s music?

Haha… It’s difficult to say being on the inside, though I think originally I would never have thought that. A lot of interviewers bring up the Beach Boys in regards to our sound. It’s so weird. I know some people think sometimes sounds a lot like Brian Wilson, but it’s still weird. I mean we like the Beatles, probably more so than the Beach Boys, they’re not like our favourite band. I love Smile and stuff, but I would hardly ever throw them on. Someone said to me recently when they were here “The Beatles are so British” but there’s nothing really British about Animal Collective at all, so you must be more American. I guess… We are American, which is probably where that comes from. Something like Summertime Clothes is very New York, lyrically, being about living in a city so hot you need to go outside and walk around in it.

When bands like El Guincho and Ruby Suns and Born Ruffians take that Animal Collective template and run with it do you feel more possesive, or proud that people are using your sound to some degree?

That’s a whole new thing for us, even just talking about it. People bring being highly influential up a lot now… I think it’s cool when bands that are our peers say we’re a really sweet band and are influential to them, because we used to be at the stage where we’d say the same thing about other bands. But it’s not like we’re in a position to point fingers and say “Oh they’re ripping us off”, or anything.

Do you feel in a position of some responsibility then, and any pressure from that?

No, not really. (Contemplatitively) We only really feel responsible to ourselves. Ever since we started we always wanted to be an act doing something singular, something individual, whether we were popular or not. We don’t let other people’s opinions effect us all that much, so long as we feel we’re progressive and moving forward with our own things, being experimental if you want to say that. But we like to feel soulful, make music that comes directly from us, and we’re very aware of being derivative. We want to be Animal Collective.

Is there anything particularly insulting or frustrating critics have said about Animal Collective?

I wouldn’t say insulting as such, but there was a school of people who thought were just a bunch of jokesters, or tricksters taking the piss out of modern rock, trying to poke fun at it. And people who think we don’t work very hard at what we do, that we just improvise and throw everything together, or don’t care what we do onstage. That would be the most frustrating thing, and there are some other smaller things like when we get too associated with drugs, called druggies or weirdos, or people thinking we’re being weird for weird’s sake. To us there’s nothing weird about what we’re doing at all. That and the whole “childlike” thing. So many of our more recent records have been inspired by who we are now and our current experiences, but get tagged with this sort of childlike wonder. I think it is good to view life that way, as if everything is new and untainted but we’re not these guys obsessed with writing about our childhood memories.

I think that’s down to you making a lot more positive and optimistic music than the more cynical-is-cool majority would.

Totally.

Has the band dynamic changed at all since Deakin stopped contributing?

In the sense that he’s a pretty big guitar-orientated part of the band it’s shown I think on this record, but it’s fine I mean, it challenges us to find different sounds and directions, and we’re quite used to that challenge and that dynamic from one of us going away for a while. Not just musically, I mean personality too, Josh is a pretty big personality, especially onstage, his energy is definitely missed by us. But it’s something we’re used to having to work around, and find new ways of filling those gaps.

Have you got any other projects in the pipeline? Would you consider putting out another Pullhair Rubeye record, say?

It sorta depends on what comes up, we’ve been really Animal Collective-orientated lately, especially with this visual project coming up. I know Noah has started working on some new songs, which will probably just evolve over time, he usually takes his time with records. With me collaborating with people like my wife (Kyia Brennan of Iceland swoonsome collective Múm) or my friend Eric (Copeland, of fellow NYC noise-experimentalists Black Dice) it comes down to when I have time to do it, when we’re hanging out, and it’s relaxed which sadly hasn’t been a lot lately. It’s something I do like to do a lot though, so hopefully something will happen soon.

So what do you want 2009 to bring Animal Collective?

Surprises, I hope! I hope it’s as productive and interesting as this one, I’m amazed we got so much done this year. Maybe there’ll be some time off, I do like to relax, to travel a lot, but I do hope we get a lot done.

Has there been anywhere that the band hasn’t taken you on your travels yet that you’d like to go?

I don’t know how possible it is, but I’d really like to play in Africa. I love African music, old folk music, it’d be wild to explore certain areas like that. We’d also like to tour Asia a lot more, it’s something we don’t get to do a whole lot.

Merriweather Post Pavillion is out now. Animal Collective play Tripod on the 27th March.