ANIMAL COLLECTIVE ///
TEXT DAN MACKTA ///
PHOTO JON FEINSTEIN ///
DATE AUGUST 15, 2004 ///

Animal Collective are Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deaken and the Geologist. Their unique take on experimental pop has developed over the course of four full-length albums, the first of which, Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished (self-released) was released in 2000. Part psychedelic folk shambles ?† la T. Rex and part Pauline Oliveros-style deep listening experience, the Collective use acoustic instruments, percussion, musique concr?®te environmental sounds, and a distinctive vocalese to circumscribe and populate their unusual song forms.

Having just released Sung Tongs, their most accessible and commercially successfully record to date, via the FatCat label (Sigur R??s, M??m), Animal Collective have found a much wider audience for their process- and place-oriented sonic voyages. By focusing so intensely on the where, when, and how of their songwriting and recording adventures, the four musicians have clearly defined their own distinctive and recognizable aesthetic.

I spoke to Deaken just prior to a sold-out show with Black Dice at New York's Bowery Ballroom. He initially noted how pleasing it was to have such a large, appreciative audience in their erstwhile adopted hometown, considering the fact that just two years ago they had experienced a show where literally every single member of the audience left the room during their performance.

Is the material in the current live show drawn from the new record?
We're doing two songs right now that are from Sung Tongs, but generally we work in a "this is this period in our life" kind of way, and we're already moving on. Usually this means getting together in some form and collaborating for a while, coming up with stuff that we feel good about and then starting to play it out live. We usually do that for anywhere from three to eight months, and then at the end of that period, we record it, really hash it out, and then when the album's done, that's it. We stop, and we put all of it to rest, and then the next time we come together, we start something new.

Were there rehearsals for the tour you are on now?
We've been working on these songs for a while now, and we were just down in Maryland rehearsing for a week and a half. That's where we're all originally from, and we were at my parents' house, which is a place where we've played music a lot over the years. It's a lot more peaceful than New York. We have a practice space here in New York, which we share with other bands, but you have to like, go there, and set up, and make sure you're not conflicting with anyone. But in Maryland, we're able to wake up, go into the room, play for a while, take a break, take a walk or go play soccer, and then go back in again. So we've been down there working on new stuff and re-working some old stuff.

The four members of Animal Collective all grew up in Maryland?
Yes. Noah and I have known each other the longest. We went to school together starting at age 10. He went away to Pennsylvania for high school and I went to a school in Maryland, which is where I met Dave and Brian. Those two had met around that time too, age 14 or 15, and they were really into music and sound. They started experimenting and got a hold of a cassette four-track and were doing everything from song stuff to more freaked-out sounds that were inspired by horror movies. They would hear the soundtracks, and even though they had never heard of musique concrete, they thought, "somebody's gotta do this, somebody's gotta do just the sounds." Around that time Noah and I got a cassette eight-track, and we started to record our own songs. I guess it was essentially pop music. We were definitely into experimenting, less in the way that Dave and Brian were - they were more into getting into fucked-up sounds - and Noah and I were experimenting with the way that we wrote songs and the way that the structures went together. We were all working like that until we were about 17. Dave and Brian were in a band and I started playing keyboards with them. I wanted them to meet Noah, so it all started melding together in different ways around that time. Noah and I graduated high school a year before Dave and Brian, we're a year older, and we took the time off. We didn't go to college. We just stayed in Maryland, saved up a bunch of money and bought some nicer recording equipment. We set up a studio at my mom's house. We started getting a lot more serious about things, and we realized that this was something the four of us shared, this interest in exploring different ways of creating sound and creating music. We started spending more and more time together. Dave and Noah both got more confident about their songwriting and the way that they approached it. Then we all went to college.

How old are you now?
Noah and I are 26. It's hard to say exactly when Animal Collective started. As you're hearing, we've been playing together in different forms since we were about 14. But the first time we started talking about the four of us being involved in something we wanted to have a unified feeling to it, without it being a band, that's essentially what Animal Collective is. That's why it's Animal Collective. We didn't want it to be just like this band, and we started talking about it that way around '98. Noah and I had put out a Panda Bear record on a label that we made called Soccer Star Records, which only put out that one release. He's been calling himself Panda Bear for a really long time. That taught us, sort of, how to run a label, and then we decided we wanted to start something new, and we decided it would be a new label called Animal. The first record we put out was Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, which is a bunch of songs that Dave had been working on a long time. I should say a bunch of songs Avey Tare had been working on a long time. He wanted to put that record out, and around that same time we were talking about having this world we could create, where we would put out different projects, all coming from us, but not always being the same thing. Then in 2000, Dave and Brian were going to school in New York, at NYU and Columbia respectively. Noah and I moved here in 2000, and then the three of them starting doing a lot of experimental, improvised jams in one of their apartments, and started to feel a very strong sense of what we were doing that felt different.

Why weren't you taking part in these jams?
I was involved in other stuff at the time. I had to be in Maryland a lot that summer. I wasn't around that much. That's where Danse Manatee came out of. We all feel that although Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished was the first real Animal Collective release, Danse Manatee was the true beginning of it, where it first started to flower.

You just did a long tour in Europe?
A month in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Norway.

Good reaction there?
Yes, definitely. It was a weird tour, because for about 50% of it we were supporting M??m, who are also on FatCat. In certain ways, we have similarities in how we approach things, but in terms of how it comes out, it's very different. Some of the fans who were out to see M??m, well, we experienced the typical opening band thing. But in general we got a super-positive reaction. It was the first time I'd been to Europe, but Noah and Dave were there for a week last year on the Sung Tongs venture.

The new album is out on FatCat, a British label. Is it being distributed domestically?
It's being distributed through Bubble Core. They are definitely a force in the industry.

Do you consider what Animal Collective does to be more in the art or the pop tradition?
We are in the tradition of realizing that any music or any art form, ideally, is not art for the sake of art, but rather a personal journey toward discovering something. We've treated it like that for a long time. Art definitely has a place in it, because art has a place in our lives, and pop definitely has a place in it, because we all listen to a lot of pop music and we think it sounds really good. Those two elements and many more end up in the mix of what we do. We would probably all give slightly different answers to the question, but in general we feel that what we do is very personal. There are a ton of traditions that we are inspired by, and we listen to a ton of music. We are usually inspired by how someone came to be in the place where they made their music. Syd Barrett, the artists on the Kompakt label like Dettinger, reggae music, whatever we are listening to - we are inspired by the process that they went through to get there, and why they were doing what they were doing, and what they were influenced by in being there. We are living in our time now, and we're trying to do something that, to us, represents what our world is like. That's one of the reasons why each Animal Collective album is really different. There are unifying factors, but each of the stages represents us coming together for a period of time and saying 'what's happening to us right now?' and 'what do we feel like?' and 'what's our world like?' and 'what's our environment like?' and 'how do I feel personally?, how are we getting along?, what have I been listening to?, what do I look at?' and 'what do I spend my evenings doing?' and how does that entire thing come together and produce itself into a song that we decide to make. That's the process of every song, every album, every performance.

Is the newest album your poppiest?
It is the most outwardly poppy of all the albums. It's a balance and a new thing to try. Dave feels a lot more comfortable with his voice than he ever has before. One of things on Sung Tongs that comes out stronger than in the past is the vocals. That's one of the reasons that it sounds poppy. In the past the vocals have been used like an instrument, and you use it to make sounds. In the past, it was just vocal sounds and you can barely hear the lyrics. We've always been interested in the melodies and the harmonies. If you listen to any record that we've done, underlying everything is a pop sensibility. It is noisy, but we hear a structure and we hear things that make us feel the same way we feel when we listen to Justin Timberlake.
Have you done many U.S. tours?
We've done a tour every year since 2001.

All four members?
We've almost always all gone, but we haven't always all played. The first one, I wasn't playing on, but I was there. The second one, all four of us were there. The third one, only Dave and Brian were playing, Noah was there, but he wasn't playing. Now this year, we are all playing.

There is a new Panda Bear album, and a compilation coming out on Paw Tracks, your newest label?
Yeah, the Panda Bear album is totally new stuff, very different. The compilation we are not talking about right now to be honest, because we have no idea when it will be coming out. It's not just a bunch of bands throwing tracks at us. We're actually very hands-on in every aspect of how it sounds. It's going to be a logistical task, to say the least. Hopefully it will be ready sometime in 2005.

Will there also be another Animal Collective album in this time frame?
We'll probably work on recording the songs we are playing live now at some point next year. I would hope an album might come out by next fall. That record and the compilation are the big ones for next year. ///