An Oral History of Animal Collective
Tracing the psychedelic contrails of a distinctive group and their crossover moment
Animal Collective are one of the 21st century’s most distinctive acts, and one of the most experimental to find widespread success. Yet their transition from tribal freak-outs at Brooklyn art spaces to packing out auditoriums was by no means preordained.
\n\nSeveral factors contributed to their success. An open-door policy for the four band members – Josh Dibb (Deakin), Brian Weitz (Geologist), Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) – and the freedoms afforded by a supportive, tight-knit scene let the band develop with minimal pressures. This resulted in a divergent, genre-agnostic discography: Seven full-lengths arrived in seven years, each bringing a newly curious set of fans, who would interact at length with the group on web forum Collected Animals.
\n\nSuch nonlinearity became a running trend for Animal Collective, forging the group’s reputation as low-key custodians of weird sounds. Release by release, concert attendance swelled in tandem with growing critical clamour. By the mid-to late 2000s, they were finding their way onto the bills of large European music festivals like Reading and Primavera, while drawing national press coverage in the States.
\n\n2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion was a full-bodied realisation of their potential. Synergising elements of the records that preceded it – the immediacy of Sung Tongs, reflecting-pool shimmer of Feels and jittery euphoria of Strawberry Jam, as well as the beatific sample kaleidoscope of Panda Bear’s influential solo effort Person Pitch – it was a generous listen, crackling with newfound warmth and open possibilities. While continuing to expand their dense tangle of sound farther out into electronic territory, Merriweather was simultaneously an articulation of what lay in reach. Lyrically, it grappled with life and death in close family, and reflected on the fading freedoms of adulthood.
\n\nThis marriage of motifs struck a chord with fans and critics alike. It was widely heralded as a high-water mark for left-of-the-dial music, breaking the band into completely new territory. Its breakout can be attributed as much to a fortuitous quirk of timing as the album’s exceptional quality: indie rock, dominant for much of the ’00s, was peaking, and Merriweather seemed to signpost the sounds (alternative pop, colourful house and techno, overlapping puddles of post-internet electronica) of a new decade to come.
\n\nOf all their releases, Merriweather presented the then-trio’s collage of influences to the masses in a manner that felt truest to their origin. Listeners could seek out what they wanted from it: Some heard Beach Boys, others heard Gas. Not for nothing does it simultaneously rank in Groove’s best electronic releases of 1988-2013, and aggregator site Acclaimed Music’s top ten psychedelic rock albums of all time.
\n\nThis oral history, drawing on original interviews with all the band members, as well a dozen of additional people close to them, follows the arc of Animal Collective: from their origins and run of exciting and unconventional music across the 2000s to the aftermath of an unlikely crossover.
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Early Years
A combination of keen-eared musical awareness and psychotropic dalliances gave four Baltimore teenagers an uncommon headstart into the world of psychedelia.
DEAKIN
\nGuitar and samples. Appears on Campfire Songs, Here Comes The Indian, Feels, Strawberry Jam, Centipede Hz and Tangerine Reef
Deakin
\n\nI was really lucky that my dad had a record collection with a few choice things that fell outside of the Stones, Dylan and blah-blah-blah. He had Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach, Isao Tomita, the Residents – I loved listening to “Constantinople” on repeat when I was a toddler. Jean-Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream are pretty etched in my brain from cross-country car trips. In addition to that, my mother is a spiritual teacher, so I grew up in a household where there were fairly regular tantric freakouts in my living room. I was used to witnessing human beings going through huge waves of human emotion, and very often, that was accompanied by music specifically picked to help facilitate those states.
AVEY TARE
\nSinger and multi-instrumentalist. The only member to have appeared on all Animal Collective records. Four LPs away from the band
Avey Tare
\n\nBrian and I discovered really early on in our friendship that we had a mutual interest in horror films. We had this night where we got snowed in, and opted to watch The Shining, which Brian had never seen. We had also taken some mushrooms. The Wendy Carlos soundtrack, with dark synths and delay on the vocals going crazy in the background, just blew us away. Tobe Hooper’s soundtrack to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was another. It was just noise, but it had an emotional quality to us. It pulled us in, demanded our time. To take the drama and the emotions of these movies and accurately convey it as a big racket intrigued us so much. That was it. We knew this is what we wanna do.
GEOLOGIST
\nSynth, samples and effects. Appears on all Animal Collective records post-2001 except Campfire Songs and Sung Tongs
Geologist
\n\nThat was one side of it. Around the same time, ’93 or ’94, we were also super into Stereolab, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead – but particularly Pavement. We would see them live a lot. The early records, like Westing (By Musket and Sextant), had a lot of strange textures that you just knew weren’t coming from a guitar. Seeing something up close onstage that said Moog on it was a huge thing for us. Our friend Brendon, who played drums in our high school band, said, “There’s one of those in the closet of the music room at my old school that never gets used.” He just went and asked them if we could buy it. I think he paid $50 bucks for this Moog Prodigy.
\n\nThe same thing happened again. I saw a Roland SH-2 in a music room while visiting my brother on summer camp, and they just let me take it for free. Finding the input on the back of that was a massive advance for us. We would use it to run guitars through, double up as a vocals box, feed whole songs in for effects. From there we were going to record fairs and asking, “Do you have anything that sounds like abstract synthesiser music, or musique concrète?” That was the beginning of the interest.
Deakin
\n\nNoah and I attended a progressive school with a lot of emphasis on art, emotion and feeling. All through our grade school years we were learning music in standard ways, but also experiencing the joy and ecstasy of singing in groups. Noah got an 8-track cassette early on, and that brought an awareness that the ways you chose to produce, or adding in nonconventional sounds, could really do a lot to a track.
PANDA BEAR
\nSinger and multi-instrumentalist. Appears on all Animal Collective records up until Tangerine Reef. Five solo LPs
Panda Bear
\n\nBrian Eno’s Music For Airports is something that really made an impression upon me as a teenager, as far as what you might call psych-electronic music. That and Aphex Twin really changed the course of my musical life. The dubby quality of a bunch of stuff from Germany – Kompakt, Basic Channel, Chain Reaction – drew me further in. There’s something really psychedelic about how repetition to me can induce a trance-like state, if it’s done right.
Geologist
\n\nNoah’s interest in the Orb and Daft Punk didn’t mesh with the rest of us right away. We were dropping acid, listening to Silver Apples and “Interstellar Overdrive.” We read about Joe Boyd, who produced the early Pink Floyd singles, in a magazine. He was talking about working with Syd Barrett, and the Incredible String Band, and Vashti Bunyan, and AMM, who were this hyper-experimental collective in the ’60s. That he could work across all these things, from twangy folk to grating abstract noise, and hear them as part of the same continuum, was so inspiring to us age 17. It led us to look for ways in which all that made sense together.
Avey Tare
\n\nWe would play music together every night in Josh’s mom’s basement. It wasn’t, “Oh, let’s have a band.” It was sort of like, “Let’s have a band that sounds like this tonight, and let’s have a band that sounds like that tomorrow. Let’s have many bands!”
2000-2004: Brushes with Success
The band’s center of gravity shifted from Baltimore to Brooklyn, where they cultivated a close following in the primordial DIY scene. A four-piece lineup was locked in by 2003, with an early glut of releases linked to the members retroactively classified as studio LPs. Alongside eye-catching performances, this healthy catalog marked them as one of the most exciting groups in a new experimental American vanguard.
Deakin
\n\nSo much of what we were doing as the band took shape was improvising together: turning the lights down, starting a recorder and just going. A group like Can made us realize ways existed to improvise, to hold onto the potential in that moment, while avoiding being academic about it. To find songs without having planned them in advance was something we really latched onto.
Avey Tare
\n\nI worked at the record store Other Music in the late ’90s and early ’00s with Noah. While I was there I discovered a lot of indigenous music from Africa, from the Bosavi Rainforest, field recordings of specific rituals and whatnot. It really interested me that music permeates their daily life to that extent. I felt some energy was missing on the live circuit at the time, so I wanted us to feel more like a ritualistic experience, too.
NICK SYLVESTER
\nLA-based journalist and Godmode label boss. Covered music regularly for Pitchfork in the 2000s
Nick Sylvester
\n\nThey had a total feeling-of-a-feeling type energy going on at the beginning. It felt chaotic and primitive and ecstatic at a moment when sequenced, minimal electroclash was more fashionable in New York. They took off because they weren’t afraid to be clear and direct and inclusive. They never worried about not being Animal Collective.
Deakin
\n\nOur practice space in Brooklyn was Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance and us. What those two bands were doing, and what we got to see on a pretty regular basis, felt intensely remarkable. There were others too, Excepter and White Magic, that I definitely would make sure to go see, but I don’t know if there’s anybody that feels quite as close as those bands. Although I’m probably forgetting somebody crucial who if they were sitting next to me would be like, “What the fuck, dude?”
ERIC COPELAND
\nBlack Dice frontman and experimental mainstay. Released music through Animal Collective-founded label Paw Tracks
Eric copeland
\n\nI remember once playing there with [Gang Gang Dance’s] Brian DeGraw, where he left mid-set to use the bathroom and never came back. A neighbor threw a full can of paint on our door during Dice practice, and another stacked half a dozen chairs against our door one night. Hey, Brooklyn was cheap.
DANNY PEREZ
\nVisual artist. Released ODDSAC film with Animal Collective in 2010 and provides live visuals to Panda Bear to this day
Danny Perez
\n\nFor a good two or three albums, both Black Dice and Animal Collective would have these listening parties where the bands and immediate friends would sit in an apartment somewhere, chain-smoking joints and listening to the respective records that, for some serendipitous reason, both bands would be releasing at the same time.
Geologist
\n\nWe spent a ton of time together on tour, crashing on the same floors at night, listening to the records that they have, so there was cross-pollination. Maybe some ideas bled through, but what we found fresh and exciting was everybody sounded like themselves. If Black Dice did something that took their sound to the next level, and they still sound like nothing except for Black Dice, we needed to work hard to find something like that.
I got to the point where it was like, “Jesus, I think I can actually have a family now while still being a musician. I don’t have to bifurcate my life in between this and what’s considered ‘proper adulthood.’”
SAM HUNT
\nAnCo’s booking agent since 2006
Sam Hunt
\n\nWhen I started working with them I co-ran a website called Dusted that was a carbon copy of The Wire, as written by Americans in their 20s. I was ravenous for something that sounded new and exciting, or at the very least some songwriting that defied tradition or convention. Animal Collective had both to the nth degree. I don’t know exactly what reference points there are that gave me a curiosity for what they were doing: Boredoms? Oval? Flaming Lips? Stars of the Lid? Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy? Animal Collective had all my favourite elements of those bands, yet sounded completely like their own beast.
Panda Bear
\n\nThat is sort of my M.O., on a general basis. I enjoy taking things that I find exciting, but maybe don’t seem to fit together, and almost trojan-horsing these ideas into popular awareness. Trying to find ways of translating them, or putting them in a costume that is more familiar to people’s ears.
Nick Sylvester
\n\nA lot of this noise scene was improvised, which made the lows quite low but the highs quite high, too. Most of the music was dreadful, but we all bowed down. The first time Animal Collective played Webster Hall [at the end of the Sung Tongs release cycle], it felt like we were all getting away with something.
Geologist
\n\nSung Tongs was a big moment. But there were still four or five records from 2000 to 2004, and every one was a gradual step up, so it wasn’t like some rocket ship. We had gone from playing to 20 people to 50, to 100 to 500, to 1,000. It was exponential each time, but not as steep as a curve.
ROB CARMICHAEL
Released 2001’s Danse Manatee on his label Catsup Plate. Steered art direction for every Animal Collective band and solo release since 2004
Rob Carmichael
\n\nWhen Sung Tongs first came out, there were a lot of people who went, “Oh, this is such a pop record, this is them trying to dumb it down.” When Dave and Noah just did the anniversary tour recently, I was struck by how incredibly obtuse and strange this music felt. The rulebook is not there on those songs. I don’t know how it came about in my mind that this was somehow a dumbing down of anything. I don’t know even how to describe that record.
Danny Perez
\n\nSung Tongs is great, but come on, they could’ve done eight more Sung Tongs after that. Two dudes, acoustic guitars, some bongos. Those guys can write catchy melodies and harmonies like no motherfucker. What’d they do? Feels and Strawberry Jam.
2005-2007: Changing Fortunes
With a dialled-in fanbase, change in record label and a string of lauded releases, the wind was in the band’s sails as they embarked upon their most celebrated period. The skittish energy of early improvisation began to find structure, and became increasingly attractive to wider audiences worldwide. At the end of the Strawberry Jam touring period, Deakin stepped back from the group.
BRIAN DERAN
AnCo’s manager for ten years
Brian Deran
\n\nWith the (unintentional) smoothness of the writing and production of Feels, some felt like they were leaving the rawness of previous albums behind, which of course built label interest in them. Departing FatCat, who had allowed them carte blanche, was the first time they started to see the side of the business they had been on the periphery of for years. It was like watching children hear their parents cuss for the first time.
PETER BERARD
US label manager at Domino
Peter Berard
\n\nStrawberry Jam was the first record with Domino. Interestingly, they were fearful of turning in a somewhat difficult record, which is funny to consider, because they’re always exploring new territory. There was a certain clarity that Strawberry Jam had that maybe the previous ones didn’t. With songs like “Peacebone” or “Fireworks,” we were thinking, “Wow – you guys have delivered an incredible record that can find new audiences and even expand your commercial appeal.” I thought it was funny when they thought that it wouldn’t.
Sam Hunt
\n\nI remember the level of excitement going into Strawberry Jam was unlike anything I’d really expected from them, and then the ensuing campaign lived up to all of it. It was the earliest years of the internet hive music, and though they were certainly lumped in with other contemporary indie bands that were achieving concurrent popularity, they didn’t really have much musically in common with any of them. It was affirming that so many people were excited to listen to music that was so unconventional; that you don’t need to sound a specific way to be appreciated on a wide scale. That was the point at which I think I realized things were happening on a level that defied precedent for bands of their era making the sort of music they were making.
Geologist
\n\nI got to the point where it was like, “Jesus, I think I can actually have a family now while still being a musician. I don’t have to bifurcate my life in between this and what’s considered ‘proper adulthood.’”
Deakin
\n\n“Cuckoo Cuckoo” on Strawberry Jam – I mean, just talking about it I’m welling up. The energy and generalized emotion coming through that song was such that every fucking time we played it live, it made my whole body shake. On some level I can listen to that song lyrically and think that I understand what Dave is talking about, but I also know well enough at this point not to presume to know what he’s directly talking about. But it was expressing something that felt not even narratively tangible. I’ve struggled with the value versus the handicap of emotional hypersensitivity for a long time. I do sometimes feel like the odd man out in life. But when I produce records with Avey Tare, they are usually his most personal statements. He trusts me; I feel like an emotional midwife or something. On some level, that deeply relatable quality is why this music matters so much to me. If it was sonically adventurous yet emotionally dry, I wouldn’t connect to it as much.
Avey Tare
\n\n[Strawberry Jam] was a struggle to get through. Josh especially was having a really hard time. That recording process was the first time we ran into a situation where we weren’t completely satisfied with what was happening. It’s strange for us because that record is looked at very fondly, and it’s a favourite for a lot of people. There are some songs that I’m proud of, but as a collection and as a lingering experience, Strawberry Jam is my least favorite Animal Collective record. Though the audience reaction at that time…
Geologist
\n\nTo this day I think one of the best shows we’ve ever played was at Primavera Sound in 2008. We played a predominantly Merriweather set; I think we were still in the middle of recording it. And the crowd enjoyed it and stuck with us through the whole thing. That was an important moment where I think we thought, “This is great! The audience are getting bigger, but they’re super open-minded. As a band we’re getting more successful, but we’re getting successful on our terms.”
Peter Berard
\n\nPerson Pitch set the table for another new direction for where the band would go. It seriously put Panda Bear on the map, with a pretty unique sound that went on to be hugely influential. I hope he won’t be upset by me recounting this, but I remember Geologist saying words to the effect of, “I think it’s the most redefining sampling album since [Beastie Boys’] Paul’s Boutique.” Totally different context and totally different reference points, but an equally redefining landmark of sampling. And that certainly informed Merriweather Post Pavilion.
2007-2008: The Alchemy of Merriweather Post Pavilion
With positive feedback to new material ringing in their ears, the three-piece set out to capitalise on their electronic explorations with a producer whose work with Christina Aguilera and Cee-Lo Green had seen significant chart success.
BEN H. ALLEN
Grammy-nominated producer
Ben H. Allen
\n\nThey were talking to their [manager] Brian DeRan about who to make this album with. Somebody said, “Oh, the Gnarls Barkley album’s really good,” and they all were like, “Yeah, we love that. Who did that?” Brian’s assistant at the time had gone to college with my younger sister. So he chimes in, “Oh, I know that guy.” Five minutes later, I was on the phone with them, talking about making an album.
Panda Bear
\n\nIt’s always sort of a dicey thing, whether things are going to work out with someone that you don’t know. But Ben was great, the studio [Sweet Tea] was great, the town that we were in – Oxford, Mississippi – felt like the perfect place to make the thing at the time. All these variables that could have gone either way just sort of synced up really well.
Peter Berard
\n\nYou could tell during this era of touring that they were going in an interesting, electronic-based direction. What they finished with on the record was quite special, but they had been workshopping those songs for quite some time.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nThey’re old school in that regard. It’s not like you’re heading in with a bunch of ideas that need to find form. They’ve been presenting these ideas in front of a few thousand people every night for two years. It’s more like, “These are the 27 samples I play in this song live, and it works, so we’re going to put these 27 samples on my part, thanks.” The first day at the studio – which is when we met for the first time ever – I asked them to set up all of their gear and give me a 30-minute live, personal Animal Collective show. It wasn’t until the end of that day that I really wrapped my head around them and their aims.
Avey Tare
\n\nWe kept saying the whole time, “Man, things are really serendipitous right now.” I feel like anybody in a band knows that when the atmosphere is the most comfortable, that’s when some of the best stuff starts to happen. There has to be this friction, where you’re not quite sure yet of what’s going on. Things can remain unknown, but at the same time when it feels a little bit smoother, then you can accomplish.
Panda Bear
\n\nAn easy process doesn’t always produce better results but, certainly in my memory, Merriweather sticks out as one of those cases. The songwriting was done separately at the beginning, which was uncommon and pretty difficult for us then, but they seemed to match up in terms of ambition. We figured out the arrangements and stuff quickly.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nThe band was keen to have no phones and no computers in the studio. It kept everybody super focused. We would pull 14-hour days. The only other person there was my assistant; he would come and go, and no one else was really allowed. There wasn’t anybody in Mississippi to mess with us anyway. It was just our own thing. We would start a song in the morning and layer, layer, layer samples, take a break for lunch, come back and keep layering.
We wanted to make something that felt pleasing and immediate, but repeated listens would reveal a whole bunch of different things going on. I do like that you can kind of choose your own adventure with some of the songs, so to speak.
Avey Tare
\n\nThere was a tornado and a big thunderstorm when we were recording Merriweather, and it also rained all through the period of mixing in Athens, Georgia. Because we were in a rainy atmosphere – and because we are all what Noah calls “light drizzle” kind of personalities – that had a big influence. On “Daily Routine,” we sampled drops of water coming out of a faucet to be able to recreate a rain shower starting all of a sudden. I even wrote a song [during Strawberry Jam sessions], “Water Curses,” about wanting my personal life to mirror the amorphous, free-flowing nature of the band. It did come to the point with Centipede Hz where we had had to be like, “Alright, let’s chill with the water a bit. We’ve maxed it out.”
Eric Copeland
\n\nThere was a long time where they didn’t have a real bass presence. They bypassed all the usual rock & roll influences. The bass on Merriweather is pretty clear and the songs were less scratchy, which is how I remember their sound in their beginning.
Avey Tare
\n\nThe nature of our music didn’t call for it to be very low end-y. Maybe on Here Comes The Indian, but that aside, we didn’t even have a kick drum in the kit.
Panda Bear
\n\nWe were predominantly mid-range; maybe some bass in our harsh-sounding stuff, but not a lot of it. But it’s pretty common for us to go fully the opposite way to that which we’ve been going, just to keep things interesting.
avey tare
\n\nEvery instrument in old reggae and early dub sounds exactly the way I want an instrument to sound. Merriweather was really the first time we wanted to hint at those influences, but marry the organic with the electronic.
panda bear
\n\nI remember at the time talking about dub productions, as far as the bass is concerned. But when you listen to dub now it seems like a higher register bass. Contemporary hip-hop features a much deeper sub-bass element. Those sub-frequencies really aren’t to some people’s tastes, but that’s kind of my favourite thing.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nOn tour, they had these big, mic’d up PA speakers they would place in the round around them to stay in as much touch as possible with the sound onstage. The studio focus, particularly on the mixing side, was to recreate that feeling. We spent a lot of trial and error playing with the relativity of low end, making sure that when the bass drops at the start of “Brother Sport,” you fucking feel it.
avey tare
\n\nI still can’t believe we lugged around six QSC speakers the whole time. My friend that owns a club was like, “Why do you have those speakers? You realize you have the entire PA that I have in my club?” But we were convinced that that’s what we needed to be able to hear ourselves, and have everything the way we wanted.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nThere were lots of conversations around the low end. The records I had been working on were a motivating factor. But I think the single biggest influence on what we were trying to do was [Public Enemy’s] It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. When you listen to it, it doesn’t really relate to Animal Collective – other than in the process. Usually, when people make records with machines, the computer tells the machine when to start playing: It plays in a sequence at a predetermined tempo and every beat happens at exactly the same place. What we were doing was making upwards of 50 layers per song completely live with no sequencing, no drum synthesis and no grid on any of the songs. Public Enemy used to do it, too. Each bar ends up a little bit different than the last, because no one’s ever quite triggering the sample in the same way. It was literally somebody going boom, boom, boom, for six minutes on the sampler to make the kick.
Avey Tare
\n\nWe weren’t sure if it was going to be too electronic. We have such a diverse catalog, and some of our early fans came to us for Josh’s guitar side. We really didn’t know.
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Ben H. Allen
\n\nEstablishing space in the mix was a constant battle. It was a weird collision of inexperience in a way, but also my own sensibilities about how music should sound. There were a lot of moments where I would say, “There’s way too much shit going on here guys. We need to take this out.” “No, that’s how it’s supposed to be.” And you’re not going to fight with a band that’s making their sixth or seventh album and been successful doing their thing. So what it boiled down to was: How do I enable these guys to do the best version of this thing that they’re trying to do?
Panda Bear
\n\nWe wanted to make something that felt pleasing and immediate, but repeated listens would reveal a whole bunch of different things going on. I do like that you can kind of choose your own adventure with some of the songs, so to speak. Your brain latches on to one part of it and just sort of hovers around that thing. There’s a couple of songs that even feature Dave and I singing two totally separate lead vocals at the same time. That was part of the package.
Brian Deran
\n\nThey felt it was the best music they had made up until that point. For me, they nailed focus and integrity. They exuded confidence. They were a band that people had such high expectations for, and they just rolled with a “that’s your problem, not ours” energy.
JUDY MILLER-SILVERMAN
AnCo’s publicist since 2003
Judy Miller-Silverman
\n\nI think there was optimism in this period, and Merriweather embraced it. The album is poignant in many ways: It feels like a summertime breeze and a place to be free. Having seen them early on in small clubs doing really avant-experimental weirdo stuff, this was a progression of all the things they loved.
DERADOORIAN
\nCalifornian musician and member of Dirty Projectors c. 2007-2012. Appears on two LPs with Avey Tare
Deradoorian
\n\nI think it’s a perfect album. It’s a great mixture of texture, pop form and various moods. They struck the perfect balance of all their characters to be able to come out sonically and create a cohesive album that was totally accessible and relatable to an audience, while being interesting and energetic. These songs you can remember well and sing along to. The lyrics are whimsical and romantic. It would be hard for a person not to fall in love with those qualities. I think they did a fantastic job.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nThere’s a bit at the end of “Daily Routine” where Noah’s talking about a regular day in the life of Panda Bear, invoking his kids to not get him up yet. It’s so normal and so human, but the piano chord change when he sings “Just a sec more in my bed” still kills me. It feels like the greatest chord change ever known to man.
SONIC BOOM
Musician behind Spacemen 3 and Spectrum. Producer of Tomboy and Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper
Sonic Boom
\n\nIt’s one of those products of universes aligning, where what’s been done is so beautiful that it just floors you. The sort of record that makes you question the concepts and trajectories of life – to help us relate deeply to each other, and make sense of it all, through this common experience.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nIf you break down any number of songs on Merriweather to just guitar, piano or even so much as simply singing them, you understand the songwriting is really strong. No matter how it’s presented, that will shine through. They had spent a lot of time perfecting the songs, and then added all these interesting textures on top that took it to this other world. Geologist has a lot of contributions to the band, but that’s one thing he’s such an expert at: Bringing sounds to the table that no one would have access to, or even know where to find. And so you have a beautiful song that has these powerful moments in it, and then you have the sound of a humpback whale mating in the South Pacific on top, or whatever. That’s the otherworldliness. They made sure the songs go to a place that’s very unfamiliar, but also at the same time, familiar.
\n\nAt the end of the day, if the songs aren’t fucking good, no one’s going to care about that humpback whale, you know?
2008-2011: Merriweather Post Pavilion
The record gradually emerged in public, with the liquid cover first making waves. “Brother Sport,” leaked on November 18th, 2008, was inadvertently circulated online by Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste; “My Girls” soon followed. In January ’09, the album charted in the US at #13, flanked by P!nk’s Funhouse, Mariah Carey’s The Ballads and NOW 29. This unlikely commercial success led the band to perform everywhere from prime-time television to the Guggenheim, and in December, Merriweather Post Pavilion was named Album of the Year in Village Voice’s prestigious Pazz & Jop poll of critics. This moment in the sun presented as many new challenges as it did opportunities.
Rob Carmichael
\n\nDave has always been really sensitive to color. Purple was the defining thing for him on this particular record, and we had found an optical illusion from Professor Kitaoka in some science magazine, so he wished to combine the two elements. But in order to make that pattern move, it required green. If I did purple and yellow, it would not move in the same way. After getting the colors right, the trick was then getting it to work in print. Phones or computer screens are projecting the light out at you in RGB, but that vibrancy always dulls down when you print it. We didn’t want it to look like a flat, cheapo rave flier. There was a blanket assumption that this was very simple to achieve, some kind of cast-off trippy stoner thing.
Danny Perez
\n\nThe moniker of psychedelic art – as far as being trippy or “psychedelic” – is also unfortunately a means for people to dismiss it. “You have to be on drugs to appreciate this,” basically.
Rob Carmichael
\n\nThis is a frequent criticism of some modern art. “I could have done that.” The idea was fairly simple, but getting it so that it worked was absolutely not. On top of that, we came up with the idea to have it stark: no text or logos anywhere, even on the spine. It was risky. To their credit, Domino went for it.
Peter Berard
\n\nEven though we’d heard songs live and picked the cover, we hadn’t heard a note of what they were doing in the studio. You can imagine what the anticipation is when you hear that the master’s ready to pick up and to listen to. I remember running over, grabbing it, and running back to put it on the stereo for the whole Brooklyn office to hear. I’m not going to pretend and say I thought it was going to be this huge thing – part of their beauty is that it’s not always immediate. But there was something about “My Girls” that stood out. There was a certain magic in it.
Avey Tare
\n\nIt was something I could not stop listening to. I was just like, “Man, this is a good song.”
Peter Berard
\n\n“My Girls” leaking fuelled fever pitch. In the late ’00s leaking was a mainstream scourge, and what’s more, deemed newsworthy – from a label standpoint this couldn’t be more maddening. There’s not really any recourse other than contacting the guilty party and telling them, “You kind of really screwed us.” The sense of losing control was so unfortunate. But looking back, it’s impossible to say whether it hurt more than it helped.
I remember turning down very large licensing requests and making light of the whole thing. Pizza Hut came in and one of them replied with, “We will take that pizza with pepper-NO-ni.”
Panda Bear
\n\nUp to that point, we’d experienced to-and-fro in terms of audience. The make-up of the first four years of touring compared to the next did switch up: They got younger, and less strictly male, but different groups would naturally come and go on each record. There wasn’t much point worrying about where the thing would land.
Brian Deran
\n\nRealistically we were hoping it was going to find a larger audience in the more adventurous folk listeners, land them a better slot on mid-level music festivals and move up them into large capacity rooms on tour. Surely didn’t see frat guys jumping on the bandwagon!
Peter Berard
\n\nOne of the best ways to promote the music is to do the most you can for the core fan base, because they’re such great evangelizers. So as a little nod toward that, we concocted a plan to release the vinyl early, which was unheard of at that time. We also purposely didn’t do any digital advertising at the time. Not only did it seem like all the places that we would’ve advertised were already lending us editorial coverage, but also it just felt like there was a rare groundswell of support.
Judy Miller-Silverman
\n\nThe band wanted fans to hear it first, so they invited them to this pre-release listening party alongside industry. It was in a venue on the banks of the Hudson on a freezing night, but people came! When all the key journalists in town dragged themselves this far, tossing superlatives around, I knew we had something great on our hands. I started to feel like it was going to be rapturous moment by the standards of indie music. Some sort of new zenith was in view.
Peter Berard
\n\nI remember getting a Christmas Day email from [Brian Weitz] saying the full thing had got out. Which of course is not the type of email that you want to be dealing with on Christmas Day. We were freaked out about what it would mean commercially. But knew that we had this vinyl release coming out at the beginning of January. Stores sold out really quickly of that. Then, the numbers started coming in during the official release week.
Judy Miller-Silverman
\n\nMy husband had access to charts and Soundscan and I steadfastly kept an eye on it. When the numbers came in, I distinctly recall texting [head of Domino] Kris Gillespie in awe. We were all so happy to see this group of non-conformers do something unexpected. It was a win for a lot of true music fans and independent-minded people.
Peter Berard
\n\nThere are predictable sales patterns that are typical for 95% of what we do, and then there’s a rare occasion where you clock a daily iTunes number or shipping figures, and it’s far beyond expectations. You’re fortunate to ever feel it once, but we’ve been fortunate to feel it a handful of times: the first Arctic Monkeys record, the first Franz Ferdinand record, Merriweather. I think we were selling more by the end of the week than the beginning. You just never see that. The moment was evidently cresting.
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Sam Hunt
\n\nThe band basically did what they wanted to do and pretty easily laughed off anything that didn’t make sense or sound fun to them. Brian [DeRan] was in lockstep with their mindset, so navigating the deluge of various incoherent enquiries that rolled in was not particularly hard. The sudden requests were kind of taken in stride.
Brian DeRan
\n\nI remember turning down very large licensing requests and making light of the whole thing, many times to the exasperation of the label. A Pizza Hut request came in and one of them replied with, “We will take that pizza with pepper-NO-ni.” Another came from Volkswagen for which the reply was, “That’s going to be a “PASS-at.”
Geologist
\n\nWe took things as they came. I don’t think we approached it as if, “We’re professionals now, we have a job to do, we have expectations to rise to.” Take Letterman. I remember being in middle school, maybe our parents were out of town or something, and we’d be up late on drugs watching TV. And then you’d see, like, Pavement on Jay Leno and you were like, “Whoa, I wasn’t expecting to see them here, but this is sweet.” So Letterman felt exciting, doing it for the kid who maybe hasn’t heard of us yet, but who watches the Late Show as a matter of routine. Just maybe they’re gonna be in the right space to have their minds opened to something.
Rob Carmichael
\n\nIt was the first time that a large number of people were seeing something that I’d worked on. Over Christmas that year my cousin, who is not an adventurous music guy at all, was like, “Did you do that record cover?” Those moments were flattering and strange – but good-strange.
Deakin
\n\nIt was undeniably a difficult time for me in many ways. It took a lot of work on my part to use my higher brain to convince my lower self that there was nothing to be hurt by or nothing to be ashamed by. All through 2009 I speak to people and come up against, “You’re part of what band? Oh, ‘My Girls!’” Having to go, “Yeah, I didn’t have anything to do with that,” each time was hard.
Avey Tare
\n\nI didn’t gauge how wide-reaching it was becoming. Even to this day I hesitate to tell people I’m in the band. I feel like it’s going to be crickets around the table.
Brian DeRan
\n\nWe were at a Blender party in NYC that was full of A-list celebs, but all they cared about was saying hi to Carmelo Anthony because he had some Baltimore roots. They were like transfer student freshmen at the cool senior’s party, who don’t really care about fitting in too much.
Danny Perez
\n\nODDSAC was in the New Frontier section at Sundance, off the beaten path of the festival. It was fantastic to be there, but it was also certainly indicative to me of the place of work like that in the world. I felt very smart and sophisticated accompanying an experimental group to play in a gallery. It's cool. But we had 20-year-old kids tripping and smearing their faces along the walls at the Guggenheim. And you’re told not to smoke in the backstage, and no, you cannot have alcohol there. You’re like, “Oh, come on. We’re a rock band. We wanna party and hang out afterwards.” “Fine, go play in a club.” So you do, you get treated like a scumbag, and kicked out as soon as the lights are on. When you’re an artist like Animal Collective that doesn’t necessarily fit in any one particular scene, it can be both liberating but also sort of tricky.
It’s certainly not the case that Coachella didn’t go to plan. It went exactly to plan.
Avey Tare
\n\nPlaying festivals was such a nightmare for us.
Sam Hunt
\n\nAs far as I know, they were willing to suffer through some of them. They offered a means to broaden their audience and play with their peers. But because they had so much stuff, getting it set up in the short period of time that you are allotted at a festival, not getting a proper soundcheck and general forfeit of stage control were all huge challenges. Those risks rarely felt like they paid off. And when it did go wrong, it would now be on a larger platform, with a post-Merriweather audience that was not necessarily “die hard” either. So the bigger those shows got, the more likely there were to be new fans that had a mixed experience.
Geologist
\n\nI remember seeing reviews along the lines of, “They played a couple of the hits, but in between each one was six minutes of noodly abstract textural synth droning. What the fuck was that? Just get to the next song!” To us, those moments are where the interesting things happen, and they’re still a big part of our sets today. We like to not know how we’re gonna get from A to B, then from B to C. That’s our style. We always leave those moments where we could fail onstage to this day.
Sam Hunt
\n\nThey played Bonnaroo during the blazing daytime sunlight, it was about 100 degrees and they couldn’t see the dials on their consoles. I thought the show was amazing, but the band felt otherwise. Then there was Lollapalooza, closing the stage opposite the main stage. Before they were finished Tool started up and blasted them off – rude!
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Geologist
\n\nWe came off at Lollapalooza and some rep backstage went to us, “That was… interesting.” He started listing songs we didn’t play, as if it was a deliberate thing to do. We didn’t not play “My Girls” at certain festivals intentionally. Sometimes it didn’t occur to us that we should embrace the moment in the way that some people expected us to. I get it. I’m a total hypocrite. I remember seeing Sonic Youth in 2006 and I wanted to hear the songs that I listened to in high school. I did not come to hear the new record. Some people would be pissed after Sung Tongs came out, but even then they got over not hearing the old songs pretty quickly. So for a while we were pretty spoiled. I guess we had a natural course correction after Merriweather.
Peter Berard
\n\nThey did two big, sold-out, quite beautiful shows at Prospect Park in Brooklyn at the height of the summer. That’s what they had been building to for years. They just had the right combination of everything. Abby [Portner] got asked to do a special set-up for those shows in particular.
ABBY PORTNER
Long-term visual collaborator
Abby Portner
\n\nThat was a hugely exciting challenge, a milestone for me, and a turning point for the band live. Before that, they had maybe a few skeletons as a backdrop, but custom-building a design in advance was different. When you see people that you’ve known since you were 12 years old all of a sudden be onstage in front of 20,000 people, no matter what’s going on in your life or their lives, you can’t help but have your mind blown. And they were psyched to be in this massive underwater world that wasn’t an exposed stage for once. It was like, “The fun part begins now.”
Avey Tare
\n\nSome early fans lamented that we were mostly stuck behind our stations of keyboards and samplers; that there was some loss of energy. When I moved to New York, I would go see real underground performances like Christian Marclay. But it’s easy to overlook that, you know, maybe there weren’t a ton of people at those shows? They’re geared towards heads. So we worked out a visual experience. Even a simple array of lights would dissolve our egos and signal to people, “Don’t think about us up here. Just be immersed in the sound.” We wanted to find a new way to live out the “collective” part.
Deakin
\n\nIn some ways it’s not that different from the era of playing with masks on. We want people to feel like coming to see us play is entering another world. We realized the intimacy of interacting onstage has a more limited impact when you’re trying to translate that to someone that’s standing hundreds of yards away. It was important to start thinking at scale.
Brian DeRan
\n\nThey realized doors had been opened: like getting a Dead sample approved [“What Would I Want? Sky” was the first instance of official clearance], or curating All Tomorrow’s Parties.
Geologist
\n\nMost bands that had been around since the early ’00s have had the conversation about what their dream ATP lineup would look like. It made sense when we got the call that this should be some celebration of our musical journey. A key part of that was our peers, so we involved artists like Floating Points, Mica Levi, Dâm-Funk, Actress or Oneohtrix Point Never – who are all inspirations to us. I think we asked Neil Young and the surviving members of the Dead. We asked Kraftwerk, Daft Punk and Burial. And ATP would laugh, but to their credit they asked.
Deradoorian
\n\nI got to play a song in a pool. I smoked spliffs with Pete Kember. I said what’s up to Terry Riley.
Panda Bear
\n\nWe threw a lot of Hail Mary’s. I really wanted Basement Jaxx – no dice. I still loved that ATP. I’m sad they don’t do them anymore. It was a special thing.
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Geologist
\n\nIn between Merriweather and Centipede Hz we got asked to play the main stage at Coachella, right before Arcade Fire. We were thinking, “In the past we’ve always showed up at these big moments, like Primavera or Pitchfork Festival, with a ton of new material, and that’s what our crowd likes.” But people’s expectations had changed.
Sam Hunt
\n\nCoachella was an insanely great show. They used the stage to its fullest by partnering with the Creators Project to make a unique production, and jammed a bunch of great new songs to a massive crowd. But they didn’t play the hits and took shit for it.
Eric Copeland
\n\nWe had a practice to get it together, so the actual gig was not especially stressful. The only problem was that Björn [Copeland] was on-site giving directions over walkie-talkie, while we were in a remote building off-site. For some reason his reception went down the entire set. We thought no direction from him meant we were doing great. But we just weren’t receiving his signal. So in the end, we unknowingly put three giant dice above their heads and just scrambled projections onto them.
Panda Bear
\n\nCoachella was one of my proudest moments as an Animal Collective member. I don’t know that we smoked the show or anything, but I was really excited that we were playing new music on such a big stage. I thought that was a cool thing to do.
Sam Hunt
\n\nIt’s certainly not the case that it didn’t go to plan. It went exactly to plan.
Avey Tare
\n\nThe experience from those tours was net positive. Though I wish we would have arrived sooner at finding a way to be more consistent and more satisfied with every show.
Geologist
\n\nOnce we started seeing some edges fraying from exhaustion, we had to re-think how hard we go at this.
2012-2018: Centipede Hz and Merriweather’s Enduring Legacy
Following three years of touring and various solo releases, the band changed direction once again in the shadow of their biggest success, transitioning to a denser and less dance-oriented form. Deakin returned to the fold, while the overall pace of group activity settled down as individual members branched out.
Deakin
\n\nWe committed to a three-month period of living in the same city, showing up to practice every day, and writing from scratch. I was champing at the bit, and just felt revived as a human to be in the same space with them again. Moving the group back to physical instruments, and away from samplers.
Geologist
\n\nI remember when we were making Centipede Hz, Noah said something to me about the way Tomboy had been received in relation to Person Pitch. When he started playing the Tomboy material first, someone actually screamed they wanted their money back because they didn’t hear anything from Person Pitch. He just made a comment like, “When you make something that all of a sudden has become so iconic, there’s very little you can do after that. Whether people like the new record or they don’t, we now have expectations.”
Panda Bear
\n\nI’m a little scared to address it, because I have very little to complain about in life. But yes, people seemed to like Tomboy quite a bit less than Person Pitch, even though in a lot of ways I felt like Tomboy was the superior thing. I remember being really beat up about it. So I think I said something to them like, “Don’t spend too much time worrying.” There’s more going on than just a blank slate of songs when you make a record, more variables that affect the reception of the thing.
Geologist
\n\nHe just knew it. Before we had just always escaped that. The public were just like, “Oh you’re treating your past like your past, that’s uncomfortable for a moment, but sure, we’ll treat that like your past too.” Whereas now we had a moment trapped in time.
Sonic Boom
\n\nSometimes artists are ahead of the curve, but what they do still resonates strongly with one section of the audience. I admire how Noah and the guys are constantly seeking a new way. Remember, Pet Sounds was a flop in its day too.
Geologist
\n\nIt’s tempting to kick back when you’re feeling bruised. I try to stay as even as possible about it because it’s not a unique story in music. How the band and fans react emotionally to the expectations they set is a function of where they are in life and age. I can’t control the narrative, and they’re always being re-written anyway, based on a recency bias. It happens. When I see hair metal dudes today, they still seem pretty dedicated to their thing, and you gotta respect that. And if this is my thing, it’s my thing. I still love being in the band and making new music.
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Judy Miller-Silverman
\n\nIt’s hard to be a band that hit a milestone and is still regarded for that moment a decade later. It reminds me of great authors of whom most people can only name one or two books, but have delicious bodies of work. Fickle fans will always want Merriweather II. But it’s also a blessing, as they have all been able to do exactly what they want since. They cared so much about their community that they've taken as many of them with them along for the ride since the near beginning. It’s a rare thing to stick with your people, to trust them and to not try and next-level yourselves with some bullshitters that come crawling out in the industry after you find success. I have seen that cycle and they did not fall prey.
Deakin
\n\nNoah and I have talked to each other about how we surpassed our biggest dream in music after the first tour. We just were kids that wanted to make some music and print up some CDRs with some cool artwork and get in a van and drive to California and play a show. If we could do that then we’ve done it. We did that a long time ago. And then it just kept on going, As we began to know and love all these bands in New York and across the country – and witnessed this wave of interest grow behind all this engaging music that was stretching the boundaries of what it meant to be folk or dance music – it truly felt like a special era.
Sonic Boom
\n\nEvolution is a constant process, but it can be very elastic too. At certain points we get a musical Galapagos, where there is a previously unpredictable cluster of specialness in a relatively short situation. You wind up with a set of super talented, forward-moving modernist bands all together.
Peter Berard
\n\nWilliamsburg at that time was in an upgrowth phase, so you had a place for artists to congregate and a support system that helped creative freedom. But you have to recognise when there was something in the water – and then there’s times when it just isn’t. Animal Collective has seen both sides of that multiple times in their career, and it is always interesting to wonder why their music captures the cultural imagination when it does. We felt that with Dirty Projectors at the same time – those two were in the eye of a storm. You can feel when you’re not in the middle of it pretty acutely as well.
Deradoorian
\n\nMaybe that’s just how it always is: cyclical. Yes, we all had the ability in that period to live in NYC, to go into a room and make weird music and then go play shows that got people really excited. But as much as I think audiences will always be receptive to seemingly “abstract” music, they’re only getting what’s being promoted. There are times when music is really interesting and fresh, and then other times where everything becomes homogenized.
Eric Copeland
\n\nThere are great moments when something can slip through the cracks and get popular. I love a grassroots success story like the Dead or Fugazi, and I love a great con – Faust comes to mind. Success is a mysterious thing and really takes all types.
Ben H. Allen
\n\nIt only happens every once in a while because it’s hard to do. It’s this confluence of experience and ability – and timing. I mean, there are brilliant records out there that get made all the time that don’t get noticed by anyone because the timing is off, the world’s not ready for it, or interested, or whatever. Whether that’s fair or not, it’s true. For them, this creative expertise they had developed over a decade came to a head right when pop culture was ready to hear an album like Merriweather, you know?
Header image © Rob Carmichael