Mojo - The Music Magazine

With their life-affirming shows and astonishing album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, post-tronic Marylanders Animal Collective swept the blue riband categories in MOJO's '09 Readers' Poll: Best Album, Best Track, Best Artist. Torch-headed sonic spelunker, Brian "Geologist" Weitz (pictured centre), accepts Danny Eccleston's congratulations.

Once again, MOJO's readers are agreed with MOJO's writers on their album of the year. What do you think about that?
Geologist: We're honoured to be selected by both, and surprised I have to say. MOJO is one of the few music magazines I read and enjoy on a regular basis, so don't take this the wrong way, but I guess I am used to both the writers and readers leaning in a more "classic" direction.

This record has touched people in a very visceral, personal way. Why do you think that is?
It's hard for us to answer questions like this because all of our records touch us in visceral and personal ways and we learned a long time ago that we can't predict which ones people will respond to or how they'll respond to it. The same goes for explaining it after the fact.

It's really divided opinion, too. Older fans who found it too "poppy" or "ravey"; first-time buyers who weren't girded for such an experimental record from the reviews they read. Have you felt that?
Yes, but that seems to happen with every record we do, so we're used to it and we don't mind. The albums are all so different from one another that it makes sense to us. In a way it's cool to be a band that offers something exciting to seemingly disparate groups of music fans as opposed to being one that only excites a specific group with narrow taste. In the end, whether it's experimental or poppy, as long as it comes from a sincere place and contains elements we can connect with on an emotional level, we always feel like it sounds like Animal Collective, and I think a lot of our fans do too. Some definitely don't, though!

What have been the upsides and downsides of a year in the spotlight?
The biggest upside is connecting with new fans in new places and performing for them for the first time. We've probably played Fireworks five hundred times over the years between shows, practices and the studio but it's always been fun to play, especially when there are people at the shows who have never seen it live. The biggest downside is spending more time away from home than feels comfortable to us and our families. We don't like photoshoots much either.

The unveiling of What Would I Want Sky at Glastonbury was a musical highpoint of 2009. What do you remember about that night?
Thanks so much. Glastonbury was a lot of fun. We were really happy with how we played and how it sounded on stage, however my strongest memories of that weekend have to do with Noah's daughter coming along. It was her first Animal Collective show, not to mention her first festival, and it was fun watching how she responded to it all. She was a total road soldier, but as for our set... she thought Noah sang too loud and that we were all staying up too long after it got dark.

You're working on the Animal Collective film. When will we see it and what can we expect?
It's called ODDSAC and we think of it as a visual album. There isn't a narrative and it has almost no dialogue. Some parts may seem like a music video and some parts are more like film sound design but the process wasn't very close to either. We worked on the music and the visuals as simultaneously as possible so they were influencing each other along the way. I don't think it'll be for everyone - not even everyone in the band responds to it in the same way. But I think people who share a very specific part of our taste will be psyched. It's going to premiere at the Sundance film festival on January 26th and we'll screen it out there a few times that same week. You'll probably get to see cellphone footage of it on YouTube some time around then. We're in the process of setting up screenings in other places right now but we don't have specific dates yet for the UK. Pretty soon we'll start getting it ready for a DVD release and that should be out later this year.

Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox told MOJO that there was a lot of talk about ballet and coral reefs when you were setting the tone for Merriweather... What are your signposts for the next batch of tunes? Any hints of where next?
The next batch of new tunes will be in the movie and they were worked on throughout Strawberry Jam and Merriweather..., but they were influenced by the visuals in a lot of ways. Even if they were things that were written and created separately from the movie, there was definitely time and thought put into matching them to the visuals. Beyond those jams, though, we just started to talk about it while we were in Australia and it'll be a ways off. By the time we get to working, I'm sure we will have a lot more ideas, and different ones than now, so it's too early to know what things will influence the next batch.

Do you continue this experiment with "popularity" or retreat to the margins? Or do you even have a choice?
We don't think in those terms. We play what we're feeling at the time and we're incapable of playing something from which we're emotionally detached.

Your musical enthusiasms are very wide-ranging: from doo-wop to the Grateful Dead to Madlib. You seem to find inspiration everywhere. Is there a well AC wouldn't visit?
Speaking in terms of genre or style, I don't think so. We're pretty open to most music. There are definitely specific artists and bands we might not ever take inspiration from, but I don't want to name names.

Notwithstanding your technological set-up, would you agree that in some respects you're a good old-fashioned vocal group?
Maybe. On one hand we're a group that uses melody as the main focus in the majority of our songs, and the melody is usually delivered by the vocals, so in that sense I guess I would agree. On the other hand, how we choose to produce those melodies and the world we create around them is very much a part of our identity and can be just as exciting, so maybe there is a bit more to it.

Your music is very impressionistic, sometimes surreal, but would it surprise you if I said I thought it very "moral"? You seem interested in goodness, like you're aware of the possibility that AC can be a force for good.
It wouldn't surprise me, though I would wonder how much of it comes directly from the music and how much comes from some of the things we do or say outside of it, like the recent PETA ad or Josh's fundraising for Mali. Overall we're not a band that deals with the world at large within our music or aims for our music to achieve some kind of social change. Sometimes I wish we did more of that stuff, and sometimes I feel we have a responsibility to, but not all of us are interested in current events or being politically or socially active in that way. In addition, those that are interested don't always feel inspired by the same issues. Because of that, we're careful to avoid the band becoming one voice that speaks for all of us as individuals.

Read the full results of MOJO's 2009 Readers' Poll HERE!