Do you differentiate, artistically, between the influences on the music of a record and the influences on the lyrics of a record? On the opening track, “What’s The Goodside?,” there’s a lyric that says something like, “We’re getting old now, better keep healthy.” Later in the record, there’s the song called “Our Little Chapter,” which, to me, seemed like someone reflecting on the ending of a relationship. And it seems like an overall reflective record. Was there a certain headspace you were in for any of these lyrics that made them come under the same album title?

Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely reflective. For me, it often just depends where I am in life, what’s happening in life, and sometimes I’ll be in a place where I don’t want to write stuff that’s reflective of my life, per se, or very personal. I think that’s where some of my more obscure or surreal-style of lyrics come in. Then other times, I feel the need to write stuff that’s very personal. To me, Eucalyptus was very personal stuff and more about the ending of relationships. I feel like I found myself in a new zone for this one, which was a lot brighter for me, just all-in-all more of a good mood, for my own personal life things—I’m also recognizing that the state of things in the world right now is in a very interesting place, and maybe not so good in a lot of ways. I think a lot of the lyrics are a balance, comparing my own personal state of being to the state of the world—kind of like a microcosm/macrocosm thing, which often I do. You know, when I say, “We’re getting old now,” I mean the human race, in a way, as much as I mean myself and the people around me. “Our Little Chapter,” to me, is kind of a collage. I write a lot of collage-type songs, where I’ll piece a lot of different images or feelings together. “Our Little Chapter” is more about friendships, which do end, and so it’s like taking little pieces of different parts of friendships that have had meaning to me and just piecing them all together, just to get a greater scope of a friendship, in general.

Kind of in that vein—when you’re writing, do you differentiate between creating a more structured song as opposed to something that’s more like a soundscape? I’m thinking of songs with lyrics, like “Saturdays (Again),” versus the track after that, “Chilly Blue,” which is more of an exploration sans lyrics.

Sometimes for sure. If I’m making a record, a lot of times a thought will occur to me, like, “Well, this group of songs is lacking in this type of song, which is something I would really like to hear.” You know what I mean? One of the main reasons for making music in the first place, or wanting to make music, is to make music that’s environmental and spacious and sets a mood for the room people are hearing it in. More often than not, that has more to do with the instrumentation and the melodies and the sounds rather than the lyrics.

What part would you say improvisation plays in your music, either in the studio or during a live show by yourself or with Animal Collective?

I like to be able to get songs to a place where there’s a sense of openness to it [in a live setting], especially in this example, where I’ve recorded songs myself but I’m choosing to take a band out to play them with me. I feel like it becomes important for there to be—for lack of a better word—a vibe between the players. You want to get into a zone and a lot of that has to do with being very open to new things happening, and I think that’s my reason for playing live. I feel I strive—and we strive in Animal Collective—to have the show feel like an experience and always feel like something new could possibly happen for us and for the audience. It’s hard to put yourself in that state of mind, especially as an audience member. I think improvisation helps because it doesn’t keep you set on doing it one way or another. You feel like you can put your own feelings into the song, which, at the end of the day, makes the song good.

What is the plan for playing these songs with a live band?

It’s gonna be varied, but we’re trying to keep it close to the instrumentation on the record, basically.

Can you speak to some of the benefits of having your own artistic outlet outside of Animal Collective, and how that might have helped the group stay together for so long?

For me, it really comes down to being a person that kind of has to—at this point—but also wants to just play music all the time. It’s what I do. Like I was saying before, I have music in my head all the time. There have been times in my life when I’ve had to practice not playing music. So for me, it just kind of happened, but I do think it is nice to have the other outlets. It hasn’t always been conscious, but [it’s important for us] to be able to explore things or experiment with things that we might want to. I found more recently, especially with Noah and my stuff, that we’ll be working on stuff alone, then we’ll be like, “Oh, I’ve been doing this. I kind of want to try this with Animal Collective.” [When we were younger], the reasons for them both existing would be a little bit more disparate. Now, I feel like we’ve gotten into a groove where they’re blending and making more sense together.

Over the years, Animal Collective has put out a pretty eclectic range of music. With that in mind, how do you and your collaborators measure your own growth from album to album and project to project, if that’s an important thing for you to be able to look over your discography and see a certain kind growth in your musicianship or songwriting?

I think it’s important to try to follow it and see. In the last four or five years, it’s dawned on us that we’re the older band now. The stretch of “the early years” has definitely come and gone, and more often these days I’ll check back in on our older stuff as I’m making newer stuff to see comparisons and to see if I think things are better or worse, that kind of thing. I have a hard time seeing recorded output as a linear thing, because I feel like we’ve made specific choices to try such drastically different things over the years. But I do think there’s more of an awareness of what I’m doing, whereas when I was younger I didn’t think about it so much. I’ve gotten into a frame of mind where I’ll be like, “Well, I’ve done that before,” or “I want to write a song like this,” whereas in the past it would just be, “Oh, this is what comes up.” Like I said, I wanted to work on my own personal recording [with this album], which is something I didn’t think I’d done in a while. There’s always gotta be some kind of a learning thing happening for me, whether it’s learning a new piece of gear to write all the songs on, or learning this machine to be able to record music on it. The challenge makes me more creative, in a way, because then I have to solve problems and that kind of thing.

Like you said, you were influenced by early rock-and-roll and that kind of thing for this one. Do you think with each album, there’s a different influence or different group of influences that you draw from?

It’s really more the mood I want to go for. This is kind of an outlier because I viewed it more like a collection of songs I was really happy with, whereas Eucalyptus and Down There,for me, were more trying to set a mood and trying to create this atmosphere in this world. Although I definitely have a mood and an atmosphere to this one—all the songs sort of fall under that umbrella.

When you and the other guys in Animal Collective are working on your solo stuff, do you ever discuss it, even if you know it’s not going to be for an Animal Collective thing? I know with Eucalyptus, you had the guys remix some of the songs on there for a separate release, so I was curious about what kind of overlap occurs with you guys?

There isn’t a ton, really. I mean, Josh recorded Down There and Eucalyptus,so there’s that collaboration. But I have this weird thing in my head where I don’t like to talk about the solo stuff I’m working on, because I’m afraid that if I start bringing it up while I’m working on it, then it might just become this thing that I never get finished. Before I’m ready to record a record, I need it set in my mind that it’s actually going to happen. With Eucalyptus, I had sort of given up on that one in a way, just because I wasn’t really psyched on the personal recording I was doing for it. Then I sent Josh all the demos that I had done and was like, “Well I have all this stuff. We gotta do something with it.” So that’s how that record came about. We do often share demos and rough mixes and all that kind of stuff with each other, just because we’ve always done that and it’s fun for us to have music to be able to share with each other. It’s more like, “Yeah, I just want you guys to hear what I’m working on,” not because I want feedback or anything. I’m just used to sharing with those guys.

I can definitely understand not talking about a project, because that can put a certain kind of pressure on it from that point forward.

Yeah, totally. I just get paranoid about it. I’m getting better with it, but I don’t mention things to labels or anything until I’m like, “OK, I have this record—here it is. What do you think?” A lot of the time it’s because I don’t want labels’ input on it, you know? I don’t want people being like, “Change this, change that.” I want make something I feel comfortable putting out there.

You mentioned that you and the guys in Animal Collective have been focusing on a new project recently—what can we expect this year, or maybe next year, in terms of that?

For us, it’s all just a matter of timing a lot of things. There hasn’t been—in plain view—a lot of Animal Collective activity recently, because we’ve had so much to do that it’s just a matter of finding time, scheduling everything. Noah and I did the Sung Tongs tours, and also these solo endeavors have sort of stretched out a little longer than we thought they would. It’s been hard to make time for new Animal Collective stuff, but at the same time, we have been all writing new material, so we have a bunch of new stuff. We’re going to get together a couple times this year and start putting it all together and just see. It’s always hard finding a good balance, setting deadlines for us but also not feeling pressured, like, “Oh, we have to go into the studio in October or in January, so we need to have all this stuff.” A lot of times that’s very helpful for us—maybe more helpful for some members than others—but we want to make we’re good with what we have before we set any deadlines. We’ve got Desert Daze festival, and that’ll definitely put a fire under us to get stuff together, at least to be able to play live, because we’re going to want to play a bunch of new stuff. I think this year is definitely going to be about putting together a record for us—whether we’ll record it or not this year is hard to say.

Especially with the Sung Tongs tour—plus you talking now about recently going back and looking at older Animal Collective records—have there been any revelations from that revisiting about changes in ways you make music?

It kind of happened with the Sung Tongs material. When we did Sung Tongs originally, I feel like things maybe had gotten crazy, live-wise, in what we were trying to do—using so many electronics and so much different gear—and the whole philosophy and purpose behind that record was to strip everything down and simplify that aspect of our lives, just to clear our heads a little bit. I think the biggest revelation that came from the touring was that it’s nice to just connect with my friend in that way—in a simplistic way, where we’re just playing guitar together—and know that it still feels good. It might not even be something that we talk about so much, but I’m sure we were both thinking it. I think it definitely contributed to Noah’s most recent solo record, just getting him to play acoustic guitar again, which he hadn’t for a while. I think he just started writing all those Buoys songs, you know?

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