The Bear Necessities - An Interview with Animal Collective

Panda Bear will always have a special place in this writer’s heart. In November 2007, Animal Collective arrived to play the Tripod, but travelling from the UK with a smashed windscreen had left the group’s other members, Avey Tare, Geologist and Deakin joining dogs and parrots at the animal sick bay. But the aforementioned bear, the man his nearest and dearest call Noah Lennox, held it together to save the day with a solo set – and now, nine years later, arrives my chance to thank him.

“I remember that one,” he nods. “Those shows are a tough call – a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kinda deal. If you play and it’s not what it should be, you understand why people feel short-changed, but if you cancel, people are upset too. We’ve kinda gone both ways, and it never feels great.”

A not completely dissimilar situation befell the band a few months ago when, midway through a tour to promote their recent LP Painting With, the controversial HB2 bill was brought into effect in North Carolina – the controversial ‘bathroom law’, which states that people must use the bathroom which corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate. Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam were among those who cancelled their shows in support of the LGBT community. Animal Collective, cautious of disappointing fans, found an ideal middle ground; playing the gig, but releasing live recordings to raise money for charities fighting the discriminatory policy.

“It felt really good – and really easy – to stand up and say, ‘this really isn’t cool,’” Noah says. “We’re not the most overtly political band, but we all have strong views; we just don’t like to bring it out in our music. Depending on who you talk to in the band, you’ll get different responses and different levels of passion on different topics – but it was very obvious to all of us that this one just wasn’t right.” It’s similarly obvious to many people that the political landscape in the US is a bit off in general – though Noah, who’s lived in Lisbon for more than a decade, is safely removed from the Cult of Trump (no typo - Ed).

Happily so?

“Yes and no,” he shrugs. “Because I’m not living there, whatever happens doesn’t affect my day-to-day in the short term. But it’s still a place I love, and there’s many people there that I care about; their day-to-day gets pretty heavily affected if Trump becomes President, and that’s upsetting.”

With that in mind, would political activism ever play a part in Animal Collective’s music?

“I think Painting With has a bit of it. I agree that it’s not plain as day, that you need to work to decipher the messages a little bit, but it’s there. It’s not strictly about politics or governance, but social politics – the potential for evil and good amongst human beings. There’s a lot to talk about in that.”

And talking about things tends to be the catalyst for the band’s output. “Ideas usually spring from conversations. We kinda throw a bunch of stuff at each other, and gradually it’s like sculpting something. It starts with a big blob – ‘I saw a movie, and it had this thing, this would be cool, blah blah blah’ – and slowly it’s whittled down until it becomes this nugget of five or ten elements that are going to define what we’re working on. That seems to be the process that works for us.”

In all fairness, it’s probably our fault for expecting a streamlined explanation. Little about the experimental popsters is easy to define, their live performances included. Not a single note of Painting With had been road-tested before committing to recording, which meant there was more than a few wrinkles to be ironed out before they hit the stage.

“It was really stressful at first,” he grins. “Figuring out how to do some things, logistically, was tough. But that’s also why it’s different from night to night; there’s such a large pool of variables that change the way we play. Once you have a system nailed down, though, everything kind of flows from there.”