Animal Collective

Two years after the excellent Feels –– during which members Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and Avey Tare (Dave Portner) dabbled in various solo and side projects — the group has returned with Strawberry Jam. ALARM talked to Lennox about recording, live expectations, and going “pop.”

You recorded Strawberry Jam in Arizona as opposed to Seattle, where you recorded the last album. Why the new environment?

Noah Lennox: We recorded with the same guy, Scott Colburn, who’s really great. We always move around a lot as far as how we record stuff-where we record it, our environment — so I think we were a little wary about working with the same guy again. So our way to keep it fresh was to break him out of his home environment.

He’s got a studio in his house and that’s where we recorded the Feels album, and we’re like, “We’re gonna take him totally out of his environment, make him use totally new equipment and ask him to use new techniques and record the stuff in a way that he’s never done before.” We’re just excited about trying to get every record to sound pretty different and have different energies involved in them.

If I wanted to get all crazy in the studio it would be a put-on…I can’t force myself to get all crazy.

It seems like this one has more of a pop feel. There’s more structure, and the vocals are a lot higher in the mix.

NL: I feel like if you go back to our records, particularly the really old ones that I think people seem to think are the least poppy, the crux of all the songs was this very pop thing, this real structure. I think it was just a lot more hidden or a lot more glazed over with all this other stuff that made it so that the pop part of the songs were really difficult to find.

On the last couple of records, for whatever reason, I think our sensibility is changing a little bit; we’re becoming a little more comfortable with the songwriting part of it and especially the singing part of it. I think Dave and I are a lot more comfortable with how our voices sound and the skill we have with singing. I don’t think either of us thinks of ourselves as really great singers, but I think we feel more confident than we used to, so we’re more inclined to let the vocals be quite a bit louder. And also I feel we’re a little more comfortable having our words heard.

Anywhere from two to all four members of the band have appeared on albums and tours. Were all four of you involved in this record?

NL: For the last few years it was all four of us consistently, but I feel like we take it record by record, era by era in terms of who’s playing and who’s not. If we start a whole group of new songs, a new album, a new touring schedule with three people, we’ll try to stay doing that with those same three people — or four or two or however many it is. On this last tour, it was just the three of us, so we’re assuming through the next record coming out it will just be the three of us.

I think we just try to respect each other’s lives, and what we want to do and need to do. I think Josh [Dibb, a.k.a. Deakin] just wanted to take some time off from the band and just concentrate on different things for a bit, which is totally fine. That’s why we set things up this way.

Animal Collective has a really strong live reputation. Do you feel pressure to translate that energy to the studio, or do you regard live shows and recorded output as separate spheres?

NL: I think it’s totally different, and the way we approach the two things is very different in that we realize that when you’re playing live, the energy of the people in the audience — ten people in the audience, a thousand people in the audience, it doesn’t really matter, just the fact that there’s a whole group of people there trying to experience something — is quite a bit different than one person alone in their bedroom or their living room listening to the jams.

I feel that things that work in that spontaneous live environment won’t work so well or have the same impact on a record that you’re listening to five, ten, 100 times. I think it’s kind of advantageous for us to try to do totally different things.

I guess because of the energy of the people there we get more into it, get way more hyped up playing live than in a studio where the lights are dimmed and you’ve done fifteen takes and you’re feeling stressed out about the fact that maybe you won’t be able to record this part or this song. If I wanted to try to get all crazy in the studio it would be a put-on, and I don’t really have an interest in doing that sort of thing. I can’t force myself to get all crazy.

Do you ever come across people who just want to hear the record translated on stage?

NL: I think our fans are kind of the opposite, in that they want their records to sound like the live show. Most of the people who come to the shows a lot — and there’s a fair amount of tape trading and bootlegging, which I think is totally awesome — I think are getting used to those versions of the songs, ’cause they’re the first impression they have of them. When the record comes out and it’s not the same thing, I can see how that’s a big letdown for some people, like, “I wanted it to be what my first experience of the song was; that’s what the song is to me.”

– Story by Genevieve Koski, photos by Noah Kalina