The band’s sound really seems to embody the Canadian music scene. Parc Avenue had tender ballads, tripped out jams, and epic progressive rock tunes. What are some of the band’s influences? Are there any Canadian bands in particular that have had a strong impact on the group and its sound?

WS: Yeah, actually last year I saw Neil Young twice. Once at the Bell Center here in Montreal and then once in Barcelona at a festival we played called the Prima Vera Festival. There’s something about seeing him live, it was like everything I thought about Neil Young, how original the guy is…just to hear his electric guitar. There is something about electric guitars that I just wanted to get back into. Also, I kind of went on a rampage this winter trying to find old Hendrix bootlegs and this weird Hendrix stuff and now there’s some fuzz on the record that’s kind of a direct result of just listening to more of the sound that’s playing. It’s not just fuzzed-out blues solos, it’s more just outer-space, fuzz thing that Hendrix can do. Those are two pretty classic references but they kind of popped up again in my mind this year. It all depends on the song, you kind of write a song and you have a very specific idea of that you want to do something that’s already been done but in your own way. The new song we released, “Tom Cruz,” it’s got a very kind of Neil Young-y as I could get on guitar solos. I wasn’t really trying but after the fact I thought that it kind of sounds like that, that insanely ballsy guitar sound.

Plants And Animals are a band that strongly bridges the continually thinning divide between indie rock and jamband. You’ve been featured on indie-dedicated sites such as Pitchfork.com as well as jam friendly sites such as jambands.com. Why do you think that is?

WS: I guess because we can do it both if we want to. You kind of choose what you want to do and how you want to market yourself and typically in the indie world it hasn’t been hip to be a jamband. But you know, who cares? It doesn’t really make a difference. I think we might have started out a bit more jammy, that’s where our roots come from, just getting together and playing and things are slowly tightening and narrowing and now it’s our least jammy stuff. There are still some extended tunes on this record, which will potentially be extended more during live sets. You also want to play to your audience; if we did a festival like Bonnaroo it would be fun to extend things. You have to know who’s watching you. The group comes from a pretty educated musical background as well and we’ve worked really hard on learning how to play. Even if we don’t really showcase that on a three-minute pop-song, the chops are still there even if it’s hidden in the rhythm. The time we’ve spent learning how to play is in their in the groove.

I noticed you guys were featured on La Blogotheque’s Take Away Shows. It seems that all the biggest indie-blog-buzz bands have been featured on this site. Was performing bare bones versions of your songs in a unique location a refreshing change from the typical club or bar setting?

WS: We recorded half the record in Paris at that location in those shots. It’s a big mansion half an hour outside of Paris, it’s this old chateau with a wicked recording studio in it. We went there and recorded for five days and we lived there in the mansion. We ate there and all the windows are open and you’re playing and there’s old bookshelves full of vinyl and the basement is filled with the recording gear. It’s a pretty magical place to work. We were there working and the Blogotheque guys came out for an afternoon and we were already making music all day long and they walked in and we were like, “Sure we can play some more music because that’s all we’re doing.” Sometimes those things can be a bit weird, when it’s more contrived. There’s the Black Cab one where you get in a cab and I could see some of those being fun but a pain in the ass. The one in Paris was great though because we were already doing it. There are instruments everywhere and more than anything we were comfortable and that’s great because if you’re not there’s a good chance those things can suck.

While the band has played smaller and mid-sized festivals including the London Ontario Live Arts Festival (LOLA Fest) and the Pitchfork Music Festival, can we expect to see you playing at some of the festival giants in the coming year?

WS: I certainly hope so. I don’t know what we have scheduled right now but we would love to step it up as much as possible. I think Bonnaroo might be out unfortunately. We’ve been quiet for a very long time, our blip on the radar has kind of disappeared. We were working on the new record and not touring that much so our buzz is kind of gone and forgotten. It’s kind of hard to start booking the North American stuff pre-release because people are like, “Oh yeah I heard about you guys back then.” It’s all timing and unfortunately people are booking bands now for the summer and our album doesn’t come out until April. It might be a different story once the record comes out and we get a bunch of media attention. We’ll have to see what happens then. We will definitely play some festivals though. Some of the best festivals are the smaller ones. What you think is the best festival, the biggest ones, don’t always turn out to be the best. The most fun I’ve ever had was when we played a tiny festival in Yellowknife called Folk On The Rocks. The stages were made out of plywood and the PA was tiny and it was just awesome. The big, mega-festivals with the huge headliners and the thousands of people, that’s one thing but I think I’d much rather play a small festival run by volunteers where everyone gets to hang out and be normal. At the big, mega-ones things kind of get out of control and it’s their own thing. I wouldn’t pit the two against each other; the small mom and pop operations are certainly more relaxed and normal. The whole idea of a festival is for people to come together and it feels more normal at small ones. The corporate festivals claim to want that but you get there and everyone is compartmentalized and every band has a trailer and you never talk to anyone. You play your set and your done and you don’t talk to anyone. Higher profile is good for business but it is not necessarily the most enjoyable time.

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