Animal Collective — the umbrella term for the musical output of David Portner (Avey Tare), Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), Brian Weitz (Geologist), and Josh Dibb (Deakin) — returned to the studio early last year to record a proper follow up to the critically adored Merriweather Post Pavilion. The result, Centipede Hz, marks a dense, chaotic, and spastic shift from their listener-friendly last effort. Centipede is already tour-tested, and the Collective is heading out next month for another round of U.S. dates, including a stop at Madison’s very own Orpheum Theater on Sunday, March 17. Dan Deacon, an electronic artist known for his energetic and endorphin-releasing live performances (among other things) will open the bill each night. I chatted with Brian Weitz, AKA Geologist, about all things Centipede Hz.
“We talked about how we didn’t want to do anything that was like Merriweather.”
Compared to the accessibility of the band’s 2010 effort, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Centipede Hz requires a couple of healthy doses of patience in order to be fully unraveled. Brian explained, “By the end of playing those [Merriweather] songs live, we thought they were really easy to perform and it was really unphysical … we had written something that once you got to know it well, it wasn’t really challenging and not really a visceral experience.”
It’s no surprise then that Centipede is as playful, noisy, and scattered as a clustered class full of kindergarteners right before snack time — and I mean full. Future live performances seemed to be the other concern the band wrestled with while fleshing out the new tracks. Brian asked himself, “If we’re gonna do another record and we’re gonna have to go out and tour with it for a couple years, what do we want out of the experience?” After a few seconds, he defined that desired experience: “Energetic, visceral, and aggressive.”
And the sound AnCo was trying to harness with their new numbers? According to Brian, rock music. Well, rock music “if you were in outer space and you heard it through scrambled FM transmissions traveling through space and bouncing off of things.” I think he said it best when he added, “That might sound pretty fucked up.” This isn’t purely musical jargon, though. It’s not difficult to hear the parts bounce from left to right headphone with little or no concern for gravity. In fact, similar to the band’s 2007 album Strawberry Jam, Centipede Hz sounds too restless and unrestrained for anywhere but above the earth’s atmosphere.
While Centipede Hz notched another forward progression in the band’s constantly evolving sound, the writing and recording process were business as usual: “Avey Tare wrote the majority of the stuff on this record. The other ones were people would have melodic ideas and jam on those, or we would just completely improvise and then people would take certain pieces of it because we would record everything.” Brian described their process as “mostly democratic” — except the lyrics: “Nobody comments on anyone else’s lyrics.”
After its release in September 2012, AnCo took Centipede Hz on the road, touring the United States and Europe through November. “The first U.S. tour was a new, fresh experience. We toured with Micachu and the Shapes and we got to be friendly with them — that was a really great experience.” I asked Brian what his favorite songs from the first tour were, and he replied with “Applesauce” or “Moonjock”. Not surprisingly, he clarified, “They’re the most involved, the most challenging, and the most physical … they feel really good.”
In March, Animal Collective will embark on another string of U.S. dates, this time supported by Dan Deacon, whom they recently met: “Dave and Josh DJed at a Hurricane Sandy benefit, and Dan performed a set there. They actually came back to the rest of us after that and said, ‘Dan Deacon played a great show, and we think it’s something our fans would really like.’ We were really psyched on it.”
And they should be. Still touring behind 2012’s expansive America, Dan Deacon appears a perfect companion for Animal Collective’s complex and physical live sets. Tickets for the sure-to-be-sweaty March 17 show at The Orpheum are available now at Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, and B-Side Records on State Street, but the mere fact that Animal Collective is coming to town tells me they won’t be available for long.