Clash Music

When Clash rang up the Animal Collective for this interview - their manager, Brad, was sounding a little bit stressed as he man-handled a tyre iron trying to change a puncture on their tour bus.

“It’s a bit weird – it wasn’t a blow-out. More like someone put a screw or something in there when it was parked,” explains band member and sound sampler Brian Wietz as Brad hands him the phone. Also known as Geologist (because someone mistakenly thought he’d studied rocks instead of biology) he met his other three band mates, Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Deakin, at high school when he moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia at the age of 14.
“What’s Baltimore like? Well, we were talking to someone in the UK the other week and they compared Baltimore to some place called Coventry,” he says, instantly conjuring up an image of a collaboration between them and The Enemy and The Specials in my mind’s eye. You never know – it might just work…

The foursome, renowned for their experimental music, aren’t really the types to attract tyre slashers, so they must have just gotten unlucky with some Dutch hooligan. Sitting somewhere in the south of the Netherlands, “I don’t really know how pronounce the name of this town”, they’re playing a raft of European festivals to support the imminent release of their eighth album, ‘Strawberry Jam’.

Now there are four of them, so obviously the first question that springs to mind is whether or not they pair up. To tag team wrestle. Or maybe to play ping pong? “Ummm, there’s not really any wrestling action in the band,” is the very chilled out reply in an East Coast drawl. “But if you go through the history, it’s like Josh and Noah were friends, and Dave and I were friends first. And then the two pairs kinda came together. I guess if we were playing table tennis then you’d have to split up Dave and Noah – they both grew up playing it and had bigger brothers to practice against.” Who’d have thought table tennis would garner such a reaction? “I’ve found myself on the same end of the table as Dave a few times and it’s pretty even between the two sides. I’m not the best table tennis player, though I guess. I would not put money on me. I have the least experience when it comes to paddles.”

This September, ‘Strawberry Jam’ will be released on the can’t-do-much-wrong-at-the-moment label Domino Records. As Animal Collective kind of fall into the ‘experimental’ category, and have been allowed to do what they like when they were signed to small time labels Catsup Plate and Fat Cat, it must be hard to make their music with a major breathing down their neck. I ask Brian how much freedom they were allowed for this record. “Total freedom. We always had it in the early days and when our contract was up with Fat Cat and we were looking for another deal, freedom was one of our ‘rules’,” the man known as Geologist says. “Some labels weren’t going to give us total creative reign – some of the majors wanted something like a ‘Feels’ [the last album] part two, and that’s all they wanted to release. That kinda ended the discussion there with them.” So it sounds like they found a perfect place to live then… “Domino is a pretty open minded and adventurous label. That’s what they wanted out of Animal Collective – they’d been following us for a long time and they didn’t want to change anything about how we work, which is pretty cool.”

The Animal Collective sound is very organic, and stems from a wide and varied spectrum of influences. For instance, the lush valleys, forests and farmland in which they were surrounded when they grew up in the Baltimore ’burbs, comes through on their records just as much as the noise of the big bad city of New York, which the foursome use as a base for the band. Interestingly, nearby Philadelphia, which is steeped in musical history, holds no interest for most of them. Apart from Brian who grew up listening to soul on the radio, none of the other band members dig the sounds coming from that city. No longer living in each others’ pockets, the band are now spread out all over the place – Noah Lennox AKA Panda Bear, currently resides in Portugal. Because of this, Animal Collective has become a bit more structured. They can’t sit and jam for hours on end, as they did in their youth, to come up with a song. Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Noah are the most melodically inclined, and had already written, or at least started, the melodies that appear many of the tracks on ‘Strawberry Jam’ before the four of them got together to record the album.

Known for taking all kinds of sounds, and sampling and mixing them to eventually appear on their records, the only actual instruments you pretty much hear them playing is guitars, keyboards and drums. A lot of the music comes from noises recorded around their houses or something found on various recordings – in the new album Brian actually uses the sound of a seal to musical effect. “That’s pretty much my favourite sound yet,” he tells me, adding, “Not many people can say they’ve played a seal on their record.”

Their obsession to make ground breaking, provocative music, has led the Animal Collective to be somewhat of a Marmite band; you love ’em or hate ’em. “I just hope that some people will give us some credit for trying and caring about our music and not think that we’re playing some kind of joke on indie rock just because it’s fashionable at the moment,” Brian concludes.
Some people love what they’re doing because they think it’s some kind of ironic take on society, while others hate them for the very same reason. The reality is that the band love making music. Full stop. To them it’s not a question of whether it’s relevant or commenting on what’s going on in the world – they’re just doing exactly what they’ve been doing since they were at school.

And with that, Clash leaves them to get on with the flat tyre. With seven albums down and the new one about to come out – with the full backing of Domino; Animal Collective’s ‘Strawberry Jam’ really won’t be a let down.

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