Collected Animals

I conducted this at Day In Day Out in Seattle 8/14/22. You can read the rest at silent light dot Substack dot com (am I not allowed to do this)

Alexander Francis Robertson: I'm not sure how much you want to reveal here, but you have a new song [“Defeat”] that's quite long--and it's not structurally like other long Animal Collective songs, like "Visiting Friends"; it's quite different. I see it referred to as a "suite"/"not suite"...

Avey Tare: Yeah, that's part of the title, was "A Not Suite," kind of in parentheses.

AFR: What did it mean or, like, what was the process like, composing in that mode?

AT: The way I actually...uh, the way I remember it, it kinda just all came out of me one night. I was just...we had started writing, just trying to come up with songs we were gonna play at the Music Box, in New Orleans, in 2018.

AFR: Oh, cool.

AT: And, um, Josh and Brian and I were all trying to contribute some stuff, and it was--it was nighttime, and I just sat down at my Juno, my keyboard, and, uh, yeah--I just started coming up with all the parts, and...in terms of, like, now, I feel like Josh sort of plays what I kind of, like, originally...plays along the lines of the vibes of how I kind of originally wrote it, which is sort of, like, very free-form, kind of organ-y...

AFR: Yeah.

AT: But, you know, with--with a chord structure...y'know, it's basically, like, four chords, the first part, and then there's, like...yeah, and then there's kind of a middle part, which is baroque...kinda...

AFR: Baroque!

AT: Yeah–like, instrumental, y'know, um...meshed with a weird folk-y kind of singalong?

AFR: Yeah!

AT: And then it goes back into a more kind of, like, free-form-y...y'know, we all just kinda have to, to...just to link in, to know, like, how the chords change, but I wanted it to be very loose, too. Because, uh...I don't know, I guess my brain these days, too, is thinking a lot more in that way--just sort of, like, non-structured structures, and just kind of breaking apart structures again, y'know.

AFR: For sure.

AT: I feel like especially with what we've been doing with the Time Skiffs and that kind of material, it's been stuff that's all been very rhythmic and locked-in, and a little bit more maybe, like, traditional, sort of, I guess?

AFR: Yeah, that makes sense.

AT: I kind of...I'm like this, where my head is kinda moving from that space, now.

AFR: I imagine that's kind of a natural part of the creative process.

AT: But this, y'know, was written--this was 2018. But yeah, I just did--I basically just came out and I wrote it all through on the Juno.

AFR: It just flowed forth.

AT: Yeah, yeah, and then I got together with Brian and Josh and actually kind of did the first incarnation of it, where I played the keyboard...Josh might have played piano? Or maybe another keyboard. And then, um, once Noah got involved...um, because Noah really responded to the song, so we didn't want to do that yet, so we brought Noah in and reworked it.

AFR: Cool. Alright, thank you, that was very thorough.

AT: [Laughs]

AFR: So, I'm an English teacher; I just finished my first year, and I love throwin' the most bizarre stuff at my ninth graders. And one of the essays that means a lot to me, it's this guy named Viktor Shklovsky, and he writes, "Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war," and he says that art can ward off "habitualization" by making objects "unfamiliar". What's an object that was successfully made "unfamiliar" to you by a piece of art?

AT: Object...unfamiliar...I think, to me...horror movies do that, where I sort of get myself in a frame of mind while watching horror movies where I sort of disassociate them from being necessarily these violent images, you know what I mean, and these images of death or murder, and they become more just about the colors, and, y'know, like, paintings or, like, living art, so I think...y'know, as far back as I remember and sort of, like, getting into things that are visual, and visual art and movies and stuff, like, yeah–horror movies.

AFR: Cool! And my last question is, some people think when it comes to the artistic process that there might be a substantive difference between an intellectual faculty that tries to figure stuff out and an intuitive faculty that just feels. Does that seem true to you, and if so, how do you keep those faculties in balance? Or maybe it's not true.

AT: I definitely think that's true, um, and I feel like I'm definitely the kind of artist or musician that weighs more on the intuitive side of things--I think having a balance of both, or a balance of anything in life, is probably the best...the best way to attack anything. I think there...there are artists, maybe, that approach things from a more intellectual, kinda thoughtful way, and artists that push things maybe from a more intuitive way. I guess I probably, like I said, lean more towards an intuitive way of playing, and I think it comes a lot from how, y'know, I'm used to playing with Animal Collective, but, uh...yeah, I dunno, I think you gotta try to find the best of both worlds.

AFR: Yeah.

AT: It's cool--I think...you can think too much, I think, um, about anything, and I--I'm, uh, not too much of a fan of...y'know...overthinking anything.

AFR: For sure.

AT: I think the best...sometimes the best versions of things are the first, kind of intuitive representation of the mood; the first thing that comes out is from the heart, y'know, and I think after that, you can start to overthink things, and you can lose sort of, like, the rawness, or the original intent, so in that sense I find intuition to be a great force.