Collected Animals

I'd love for Davey to candidly explain how he writes /constructs a song. I think it's a pretty personal process to him though so it'll probably never happen

BYT: Sweet. You’ve been cited as Animal Collective’s principal songwriter. Where do you draw the inspiration?
DP: I guess a lot of places. Observing things around me, stuff I experienced through music and film. Growing up in a lot of nature and connecting music with it. Also, driving, a lot. Especially growing up driving around the country in Maryland and connecting music with my surroundings has definitely influenced me.

BYT: What comes first, lyrics or melodies?
DP: Usually the melodies come to me first. But then I feel like I definitely have to have lyrics to attach the emotion, I couldn’t just sing about nothing. So with all of Animal Collective’s stuff we do melodies first and the lyrics come after. Sometimes the lyrics come fast, like I’ll have a lyrical idea that’ll just come along with the melody. But sometimes it doesn’t, and what I want the final lyric to be won’t come until a lot later.

BYT: How much of it is improvisation?
DP: We got together for three months at the beginning of the year and it was the first time the four of us had played together live in a while. And there is a lot of jamming at that stage, to just to get loose and to find the sound we’re looking for. We’re always trying to move into a new world. Improvisation informs the next step sometimes, but when it comes to actually writing songs it’s all written down. In the live set there’s usually transitions from one song to another that are improvised.

BYT: You’ve seen a tremendous shift of genres in your work with both Animal Collective and solo. Is this conscious?
DP: It’s conscious to try lots of different things out. I like so many different types of music so it’s hard to just fit into one frame of mind because there will always be sounds from many different places that will inspire. And with Animal Collective I feel like it happens even more so because we’re coming from such different places.

Avey: I think we've basically talked about this in a number of ways but maybe we just arent being clear. We are usually pretty vague when it comes to our musical process i suppose but i kind of like it that way. I wouldnt want to come on here and tell you how we make every sound and every song cause there is a mystery to it all that i like to keep and i think there is a otherworldly aspect to alot of our songs that (if i were the fan) might be ruined if we really broke it down. Thats not to say there is some crazy alchemical process that we use (or is there hehehe) i just dont really like to talk about it so much.

every song is different in the way that we go about piecing it all together, but for the most part the melody comes before everything else and then everything else is sort of shaped to that. I think that the personality of each song can be attributed to the fact that we all have a different outlook on the song and are able to add something to it that not only reflects our own personalities but also contributes something that the others wouldnt have thought of. since you asked about peacebone.. i wrote the vocal line to peacebone in my head and then i made that pulsey track (its not really a loop) that has all the chord changes in it and brought that in played it for the dudes and sang the melody over top of it. I always wanted the steel drum line in the chorus to be in there but didnt try it out until we were in the studio. Everything else was made by the other dudes as we played it more.

Da

The infamous indian tour

I'd love for Davey to candidly explain how he writes /constructs a song. I think it's a pretty personal process to him though so it'll probably never happen

A couple years ago Avey said (on the Wandering Wolf podcast) that he wanted to make a documentary about Animal Collective's first real tour with Black Dice. Apparently he has tons of footage from those shows. I'd give them all my money for that.

A couple years ago Avey said (on the Wandering Wolf podcast) that he wanted to make a documentary about Animal Collective's first real tour with Black Dice. Apparently he has tons of footage from those shows. I'd give them all my money for that.