On Sunday night, we got our first recorded taste of just what that sounds like, with two tracks from the “Honeycomb/Gotham” 7-inch uploaded to the band’s site. Indeed, the A-side, “Honeycomb,” features a sample of a radio promo spot before launching into a collage of manipulated gurgles of electronic noises, resembling something off a whimsical, hyperactive video game soundtrack. B-side “Gotham” is much darker and spare but is no less apparent in its representation of these otherworldly sounds.

You can hear the two songs for yourself here. The single will be available through Domino Records’ online store on June 26 and is scheduled to hit shelves in the summer.

The 7-inch, limited to a pressing of 500 copies on orange vinyl, is available for preorder through Friends. Or, if you so choose, you can purchase a copy at the Ottobar on April 19, when Wasner opens for Sharon Van Etten.

Earlier this year, City Paper sat down and talked with Wasner about her solo work; you can read the interview here.

It ranks as one of the tightest pop songs in the band’s repertoire, featuring beautifully arpeggiating keys from Victoria Legrand and some of Alex Scally’s most ebullient guitar playing to date. As for the vocals, Legrand continues to show a crispness and sense of melody in her singing, pulling back another layer of the bedroom haze and giving the lushness and tranquility of her voice more resonance.

The new record, Bloom, will be released on Sub Pop May 15. In an interview with NME, Alex Scally says the album will be “their own Pet Sounds or Disintegration, not in sound, but as something which feels like a definitive statement.”

With No Age guitarist Randy Randall for “When I’m in a Car” in tow, the group’s 1:14 jam features a new layer of buzzy skittishness that hits the same pleasure spots as some of the more propulsive Wire songs.

Hear the full song below. Jazz Minds comes out March 20 on Load Records.

The entire video focuses on a seated Jana Hunter, as seen through a convex screen resembling that of an old television set. You know the kind, the huge boxes that required proper positioning of an antenna so the picture wouldn’t scramble.

As the song begins its slow build, the image of Hunter begins to flutter. With each new element of instrumentation, the fluttering becomes more pronounced, creating something of a waveform filament to place over top of the image of Hunter singing. When the song reaches its zenith, we are thrown into swirling black and white colors, then a shot of Hunter singing the chorus that kind of looks like a colorized version of the authoritarian figure in the 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial, and finally the crystalline opening shot from whence we came.

You can view the video in its entirety below. Nootropics hits shelves on May 1. You can see Lower Dens four days after that at the Ottobar.

Click here to view the embedded video.

First, let’s get to the video, for the song “Diagonally Talking Echo.” The layers of swirling guitars we’ve come to love in Wong’s music are given a full color wheel treatment, first seen on screen as circular splotches of various hues and then as a full-on psychedelic swirl.

Beneath that layer we see Wong, his face painted completely red, offering a rare vocal accompaniment, a shifting series of wordless wails and mumblings, to his guitar work. With the utterance of a short “waaaa,” the shot shifts to colliding bodies of water, and for the grand, thickly layered musical finale, a combination of everything.

As for the contest, Wong is asking people to post a recorded narration of a vivid dream that has affected them to his Soundcloud page. He will then take some of the descriptions and write original soundtracks for each. Snippets of the recorded results will be posted online beginning Feb. 20.

As part of the its second annual compilation, the label has culled 30 new songs from some of the area’s top talent. Some we’ve heard—new songs from Secret Mountains, the first releases of Wye Oak lead singer Jenn Wasner’s solo project Flock of Dimes—but much of it is brand new, including unreleased songs from Dan Deacon, Ponytail’s Dustin Wong and Molly Siegel, Jason Urick, and many, many more.

Below we’ve got the full track list and the world premiere of a new track from psych-rock veteran Celebration, titled “Sure Shot.” Friends is giving away the compilation for free on Thanksgiving. For all you collectors out there, the compilation will be getting a physical release as a two-tape package, which begins shipping in about a week.

Side A
Celebration – Sure Shot
Future Islands – Tomorrow (Live @ KEXP)
Weekends – Basement Fuzz
Microkingdom – God’s Total Woman
Moss of Aura – Post
Jason Urick – Woman (For Jah Shaka)

Side B
Oxes – Hiawatha (Live @ WNUR)
Witch Hat – Break Interstate Park
Violet Hour – Absence of Limbs
Sri Aurobindo – No Coincidence
Lonnie Walker – Inside Factories
Height With Friends – Mustard Seed

Side C
Soft Cat – This Is How We Walk on the Moon
Lands and Peoples – Memo (Live)
Flock Of Dimes – Prison Bride
Beth Varden – I Can’t Stand
Brian Adam Ant – Psychic Assassins
Secret Mountains – Weepy Little Fingers
Buhloones – Something Else Exchange
Holy Ghost Party – Breakfast
Beyond Say – Bowl of Water Moccassins

Side D
Dan Deacon – The Token Circle High
Co La – Visions of Excess (Wet Version)
Jake Lingan – Hair Trigger
Vlonde – Love Theme
Avocado Happy Hour – Tactic
Dustin Wong and Molly Siegel – Untitled
Chase O’Hara and Amy Reid – Love You in Summer
Inflatable Mattress – Fantasy Motorboat
Neal Reinalda – Sunset in Baltimore

Celebration
- Sure Shot by friendsrecords

For more details and a few words from founding member Jeff McGrath, head over to Impose Magazine/Bmore Musically Informed, where the story was first reported by Brett Yale of Friends Records.

The nut of it:

Jeff [McGrath] explains, “It sort of just feels like we’re moving out of an apartment.” A few weeks ago William Cashion of Future Islands asked Thank You if they wanted to join them for a January tour. When the band got together to discuss William’s proposal, it became evident to everyone that not all of the members still enjoyed touring or had the will to continue to do so.

Each of Thank You’s LPs since their days with original drummer Elke Wardlaw have been hand-crafted with a strong ode to their live performance. First and foremost, Thank You is very much a live band. Without this component, all four current members couldn’t envision moving forward under the same moniker. Jeff was quick to point out that they’ll all remain best friends, they all plan to stay living in Baltimore, and that they all plan to continue making music – just with different friends and artists. This makes sense, especially when considering the musical cycle currently occurring in Baltimore.

Thank You was probably one of the most unsung bands in the city, which is to say it never caught on nationally as big as it should have. Thank You was sort of like our own little secret. Its live shows were mammoth, a delirious swirl of keys, guitar, and bass created by McGrath and Michael Bouyoucas, with Emmanuel Nicolaidis posted up in the back, all flying limbs as his hands and feet worked parts of the drum kit at a seemingly inhuman rate. The band this year added Stephen Santillan on bass, and it’s sad to see that this lineup will be short-lived.

On looking back before heading out on tour:
Nolen Strals: Last night I was actually looking through these folders saved on my computer with all these photos people have sent us over the last nine years. Looking at those pictures of shows from 2003 and 2005 and 2006—just moving through the years made me really happy to remind me of these awesome shows that we had played and all these awesome times we’ve had. But at the same time, it was also like, “Well, that’s the end of that. Won’t be having this kind of fun except for eight more times.” Like Bruce said, it was this bittersweet thing. But that’s what nostalgia typically is.

On earning respect and being sincere:
NS: I’m more proud of this band than almost—almost—anything else I’ve ever done. It seems like a good number of people respect the band. There’s tons of bands that are liked and they’re loved, but I think respect is something not a lot of bands get. And I think we got that just because as the times changed, as a band, we stayed true to the punk ethics and that way of operating we all learned in the late ’90s and early 2000s. We still did stuff mostly, but not entirely, the hard way. And maybe that didn’t benefit us at times, but I’m glad we stuck to our guns.

Bruce Willen: One thing I’m proud of the band is I feel like we’ve been very sincere in the music we’ve been trying to make. I think we’ve all been trying to make music that we like.

NS: We’re not gonna kowtow.

BW: We’re not gonna kowtow to whatever is popular. I know Nolen was very sincere with the lyrics. Even when the lyrics are sarcastic, there’s still a sincere idea and feeling behind that. I think that’s something is not—the sort of sincerity with ideas and putting ourselves out there with the risk of failing or being viewed as whatever, I think that’s something to be happy about.

On the ability to cross over and appeal to different audiences and being mislabeled by critics:
NS: There’s something in what we played and how we played it that’s appealed to this broader base. That’s one thing I have always loved about this band: You can’t pigeonhole us. There’s lots of people who’ve tried to, saying, oh, they’re this genre or that genre. But if they listen to the next song that’s on the record, then they’re wrong.

BW: More recently, we haven’t really thought of the band being a particular genre. I guess it’s loosely postpunk or whatever.

NS: Whatever that means [laughs].

BW: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. Which is the most fucking amorphous term you could use. I think working within this pop music, rock music genre roughly, but I think within that we haven’t ever been focused on the trappings of genre.

NS: We never set out to sound like one particular thing.

BW: I think that definitely has helped us be able to cross, I guess, sort of social boundaries within underground music. I think it probably also has hurt us at times, with reviewers especially. You see so many reviews of us, and people talking about, ‘Oh, these guys sound—they’re like punk, but they’re not really.’ But you can see they’re reviewing us as if we’re a punk band and they’re upset because it’s not really as . . .

NS: “It doesn’t fit my narrow views of how things easily codify.”

BW: [In mocking voice:] “It’s like pop, but then your vocals are too angry or abrasive.”

Which, whatever, that’s fine. People who like the band, like the band. People who don’t, don’t. I don’t think we’ve ever cared too much about it.

NS: We do this for us.

BW: Yeah, exactly.

NS: We don’t do it for a reviewer, and we don’t do it for a point score.

CP: Hmm, I wonder which site you’re talking about with that one.

BW: Citypaper.com. [laughs]

On songs about fonts:

CP: When I asked Dan Deacon [about the band’s ability to cross over], he said, “Because they were a hardcore band that sang about fonts.”

[Group Laughs]

NS: There wasn’t only one song that ever—oh no, there were two—that ever specifically mentioned fonts, and the most recent was, like, four or five years ago. And we still get, “Oh, they sing about fonts.” Fuck you. No we don’t. Listen to the words. There’s a lyrics sheet in there.

[Group laughs].

Even when I did, it was [in extremely sarcastic tone:] a prism to view it through [laughs].

On the fate of Bruce’s hearing protection headphones:
NS: We should have a raffle for them.

[Group laughs]

BW: Oh, God. They’ll be very disappointed when they get them and they smell them.

NS: And they squeeze them and a cup of sweat comes out [laughs].

BW: Yeah, with my first pair, I realized too late that you need to take the foam pads out after every show, because otherwise all the sweat that builds up in them gets in there and they smell really bad.

NS: It’s like a faucet when you squeeze them.

BW: Little-known Double Dagger trivia there.

[Group laughs]

NS: Little-known Double Dagger trivia: We’re gross.

On the importance of the live show and liking different types of songs:
NS: This might sound really corny, but this music means a lot to all three of us. And I think through the way we performed it, we wanted to express the way it made us feel. But also, watching a band that just stands there is boring as hell. If I want to go to sleep, I’ll stay at home. Give me my five bucks’ worth.

BW: I think it’s one thing if someone is playing some really complicated music and you’re watching the musicianship, appreciating that. But we’re playing rock. It’s not like we’re gonna do crazy solos or switch between five different instruments in one song—something like that that is going to have that kind of visual interest.

NS: We’re a punk band. If we were playing punk music and standing still, we wouldn’t be a punk band. We’d be Green Day.

BW: [In slightly hushed tone] We just told him we were genre-less, Nolen.

[Group laughs]

CP: Contradicting himself.

BW: Well, I think that’s fine.

[Group laughs]

BW: I mean, we are a punk band relatively speaking.

CP: Like you said, it’s the ethos.

Both: Right.

NS: Punk brains.

BW: I think it’s OK to be multiple, to play more than one kind of music.

NS: I think that’s part of why we can play at these different venues and we can play with such a wide spectrum of bands, because we don’t just like one kind of song.

BW: I think that’s a better way of putting it. That sounds a little pretentious: “Oh, we’re like genre-less.” Which I think wasn’t necessarily what we were trying to get at. It’s OK to be a punk band but to also have pretty parts in your songs.

NS: Or to have adult lyrics.

On why you shouldn’t eat off the Zodiac’s floor and misadventures from wandering into the crowd:
NS: My shoe had come untied. It was really loose. I could feel that it was gonna come off as I was running around. My heel was already out of it. And the space [at the Zodiac] was really confined, so I couldn’t move around much, and I felt like I was not giving the people the show they deserved for $5 or whatever. And I was like, Oh, for some reason, between lines, I will take my loose shoe off my foot, lick the bottom of it, and throw it back on the floor. And it was very wet, covered in grit, and the next day I laid on the couch all day because I was feeling sick from whatever was on the bottom of that shoe [laughs].

There’s other times I’ve accidentally grabbed people where I shouldn’t have because I was stumbling and trying to catch my balance. I’ve taken a lot of people’s elbows and knees and feet to the face.

BW: He’s taken a lot of people’s drinks.

NS: I’ve taken quite a few people’s drinks. I’ve knocked a lot of cigarettes out of people’s hands, and I don’t regret one of them [laughs].

CP: You’re doing them a favor.

NS: Yeah. I’m doing myself a favor so I don’t have to struggle to breathe.

On the More release show at Floristree:
BW: I remember that show, there was kind of like a weird moment: Whoa, I’m in this band and there’s all these people here who are so pumped that this record is coming out—they’re not even my friends. [Group laughs]. They’re a bunch of people I don’t even know but they’re still excited about the band.

NS: I’ve never seen this person before.

BW: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, I don’t know—it’s cool.

On trying to trick the Canadian Border Patrol:
BW: So we were going into Canada, and we had heard so many stories about bands getting their merch confiscated. We had this fake letter that we’re going to this recording studio in Montreal, this whole story made up. We left most of our CDs and shirts at this friend’s house in New York state so we could pick them up on the way back. We’re so nervous about our merch getting confiscated that everybody put on five or six layers of T-shirts. I remember Nolen and [tour drummer] Ben [Valis] in the back of the van putting on T-shirt after T-shirt, and we’re like on our way to the border [laughs].

NS: Once you put on three shirts, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth one, it’s really tough. And then maneuvering to put your jacket back on and then trying to look natural [laughs], it’s not easy.

BW: I think they didn’t even look in the back of the van.

NS: No, they opened the back doors, glanced in, and closed them.

On lyrics:
NS: Anybody who knows me will tell you I’m really opinionated. The band has always been my primary source of expressing how I feel, mostly about things that frustrate me or they just piss me off. I think when the band started, it was much more, “I’m angry. Fuck this.” When you get older, your life gets more nuanced and complicated, and I think the lyrics still had frustration at their root, but their approach to that frustration was not so black and white.

Because the older you get, the more you realize life isn’t black and white. We think about the state that the city’s in and what the responsibilities as residents here that we have and how we can respond to what’s going on. I think it’s awesome that now there’s this pretty good number of people who care about what we do and what we have to say. I feel like when we have songs that are like [“Luxury Condos for the Poor”], hopefully, maybe it does make an impact. Hopefully it does sort of make people just think more concerning these issues. Because that luxury condos thing is still an issue. So obviously no one in City Hall heard it [group laughs].

Final thoughts:
BW: Start a band.

NS: Yes.

BW: Start your own band.

NS: If you like us so much, then take that energy and that excitement and do your own thing with it.

BW: Or start your own metaphorical band, if you aren’t into being in a band. Take the word band as you will, your own version of a band. Do your own creative projects that you want to put a lot of energy into.

Well, that has all changed. It was announced today that Oxes will take the stage at the G Spot on Nov. 5 along with Thank You and two yet-to-be-named guests. Yup, you read that right: the G Spot–the venue that seemingly keeps coming back from imminent closure.

Furthermore, Friends Records, which is putting on the show, will be issuing two new vinyl releases by the band before the end of the year. One release will include the tracks “Crunchy Zest” and “Orange Jewelryist” and more new material. All of the details aren’t settled on the second, but we’re told it will include special guest appearances. Stay tuned for more.

“As the band got older and grew and changed, the people in it did too, and our individual lives are pulling us towards other pursuits,” the statement, signed by all three members, reads. “With this in mind, we decided to focus on playing a few final shows in some of our favorite cities, and go out on a high note instead of slowing fading away.”

But it ends without any animus. After three albums, three EPs, a cassette, a CD-R, and a split, Nolen Strals, Bruce Willen and Denny Bowen say they are going out on their own terms.

“We still like the music, the shows, and each other, and we think it’s best to bring things to a close while we can still devote our full energy to this music,” the statement continues.

They will play two more Baltimore shows before closing up shop, the last of which is Oct. 21 at the Ottobar with as yet unannounced secret guests, a little over nine years after their first show.

Read the full statement and see the band’s remaining dates below:

Double Dagger’s final show will take place on October 21, 2011, in our home city of Baltimore, Maryland, exactly nine years and two months from the date of our first show.

We’ve accomplished a lot in those nine years, playing some incredible shows with bands we love and in places we never thought we’d get to play. We’ve been fortunate enough to have several great labels support us along the way, starting with local friends Hit-Dat, and later Chicago-based labels Stationary (Heart) and Thrill Jockey, as well as hometown labels Toxic Pop and Terra Firma.

To answer the inevitable question about why we’re breaking up: Like any relationship’s end, it’s complex, but for us it mostly comes down to time. As the band got older and grew and changed, the people in it did too, and our individual lives are pulling us towards other pursuits. With this in mind, we decided to focus on playing a few final shows in some of our favorite cities, and go out on a high note instead of slowing fading away. We still like the music, the shows, and each other, and we think it’s best to bring things to a close while we can still devote our full energy to this music.

We’ve been taking time off from playing live to finish a few new songs, which will be released posthumously in some format (the details are still being figured out). We’ve also been planning a string of final shows in some of our favorite cities next month. Those dates are at the end of this and are also posted at www.posttypography.com/doubledagger and www.thrilljockey.com.

We could fill a book with the people we want to thank for everything they’ve done for us over the years. Those who helped us out in any way from putting out our records, helping us screenprint record covers and t-shirts, taking a chance on booking us in other cities we’d never played before (or booking us time and time again), roommates who sat through countless hours of practice (and sometimes recording), strangers who made us meals in their homes, let us sleep on their floors, drove us around, put up with our bad jokes, lent us equipment (though more often it happened that we were the lenders), absorbed the onstage insults, didn’t sue us when getting hit in the head with drums, gave us good advice, bought the records and came to the shows and flipped out which gave us the energy to better do the same, and most importantly the girlfriends and wives who let us take the time to do this, all of you made everything we’ve put into this worth it.

We’re all creative dudes so this isn’t the last you’ll hear from us, but it is (almost) the end of the line for hearing from us together as Double Dagger. The last of it will be that forthcoming collection of songs and the last few Double Dagger shows, which are:

Wed, October 12 – Baltimore, MD – Charm City Art Space – w/ Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Holy Tongues (ex-Ruiner)

Thu, October 13 – Detroit, MI – The Berkley Front

Fri, October 14 – Chicago, IL – Ultra Lounge – w/ Call Me Lightning

Sat, October 15 – Chicago, IL – TBA

Sun, October 16 – Cleveland, OH – Now That’s Class – w/ Megachurch, Clan of the Cave Bear

Nothing particularly extraordinary happens as they hitchhike their way to the ocean. We see our couple wait wearily by the side of the road. We see the boy playfully pushing the girl in a shopping cart. We see them go to a carnival and share funnel cake. We see them venture into the woods. And when they finally do make it to the beach, we see them streak toward the crashing waves, only to stop at that point where the water rushes over your feet, only to recede moments later. Those are the little moments that populate any relationship–the good stuff.

Director Jay Buim quickly cuts between these beautifully shot vignettes, hardly focusing on any one scene. It’s the sum of these moments that gives the video its evocative power. Still, there’s a little bit more beneath the surface. Our male lead is almost constantly sporting a toothy grin, enjoying every little bit of what’s going on. Yet it is not the same for his companion. She will show mutual affection at some points and seem removed at others. She sometimes looks distant, slightly unsure. And as you hear vocalist Sam Herring’s chorus of “It just takes time/ It just takes time/ A little trust and your time/ It can change your life” it becomes clear, in a subtle way, that the video functions as a fantastic companion piece to these emotions.

And whom did he think to mention first as an example of these song-stealing charlatans, these thieving hacks who somehow avoid any legal recourse? None other than Dan Deacon, of course. Wait, what?

“There’s this Dan Deacon guy who makes mashups and is super popular with the college kids,” Malkmus said in a Salon interview. “He doesn’t have to pay sample clearances for some reason, even though he’s totally taking these songs.”

Okay, we were 99.99 percent sure he meant to say Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, and a subsequent tweet by Nils Bernstein, director of publicity at Malkmus’s label, Matador Records, confirmed this suspicion. (Interestingly enough, the text of the interview on Salon has since been changed from “Dan Deacon” to “Girl Talk”).

Honestly, any accusations of hackery levied against Gillis would be totally justified. But Dan Deacon, as we know, is composing film scores for Francis Ford Coppola, giving TED Talks, curating another Gunky’s Basement film series, and other cool stuff. He is a composer, an artist of the highest order, a regular renaissance man.

Regardless of where you stand on Malkmus’s opinion on sampling, we can forgive this verbal slip. Malkmus has always been known for being charmingly passive. Do you really think he spends his time poring over music blogs and Pitchfork? Doubtful.

Still, it would be cool if, as a penance of sorts, he took the opportunity during his Sept. 29 show at Rams Head Live with the Jicks to break out the old Pavement gem “Transport Is Arranged,” which boasts the line, “Walk to Baltimore, and keep the language off the street.”

Featured contributors include Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, who provides vocals on “The Great Fire”, and Double Dagger’s Denny Bowen, who added live drumming and additional percussion. The 11-song tracklist, which includes the recently released “Before the Bridge,”is below.

On the Water

Before the Bridge

The Great Fire

Open

Where I Found You

Give Us the Wind

Close to None

Balance

Tybee Island

Grease

All four members spent January through March working in a converted barn on the property of band member Josh Dibb’s mother’s house, just the same as they did some six years ago when they wrote several songs for Feels.

Of course, on Saturday they’re actually playing a show at Merriweather. Below are excerpts from the conversations with Weitz and Portner that didn’t make it into the story, including why you won’t hear too many Merriweather songs, more thoughts about returning home, and how they feel about being able to put on a show at the venue at all.

On getting back to group writing sessions after the last two albums were done as an exchange of ideas over e-mail:
Weitz: Oh, that was a lot of fun. . . . It was difficult, especially for someone like me—my role in the band is more electronic, and you have these very specific samples and whatnot. The e-mail way of working was really easy for me, because you had time to process and think. You didn’t have to come up with something on the fly or in real-time. It was really challenging and difficult, but after a while you get the hang of it and your brain sort of gets used to it. It was a lot more challenging than previous writing sessions for me. We’re always trying to make things challenging for ourselves to keep it fun.

Portner: The only time that all four of us get to hang out anymore is when we’re working on stuff. In that way, we’re kind of really lucky. We’re such old friends, and we like hanging out with each other so much. That we can do it when we’re at work, it seems rare. It’s rare to just be psyched on going to work and working with the people that you work with. It’s always about us hanging out, joking around and that kind of thing, and jamming.

On the therapeutic and cathartic qualities of leaving New York to write after Portner dealt with a divorce, his sister getting cancer, and the death of his grandmother, topics he explored on his solo album Down There:
Portner: Definitely there is and has been. I feel like definitely the writing, for me, that we all did had its moments of things still lingering from the darker periods in New York the past couple years for me. And I think it was helpful to work through some of the remaining stuff and yeah, just shift out of that vibe.

On eliminating field recordings for the new songs:
Weitz: I have a very classic Geologist-puts-field-recordings kind of move that I like to do. I’m just kind of sucker for that stuff. But I actually set a rule for myself with this one that I wasn’t going to do it, and I wasn’t going to make recordings from around Baltimore, use any nature sounds or anything like that. . . .  I just couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like cheating, almost.

On the “alien band” theme and digging through old radio clips:
Weitz: We just always wanted to sound like an alien band, ya know? Not like the bar scene from Star Wars, or anything like that, but sort of that vibe. And we thought, if you were able to sample sounds from outer space— that’s a very common thing that people do, like, you try to make these sounds that sound like they come from outer space. Lots of psychedelic rock bands [do that]. We thought it would be interesting if it went the reverse way. If you actually were a band on another planet, like, what you would be sampling from Earth? Radio waves travel into space, so we actually went back through old cassette tapes—Dave’s brother used to be a radio DJ in the early ’90s. So we went through a lot of early ’90s radio recordings and took a lot of radio IDs and snippets from DJs talking on the radio and put them into the stuff. . . . We were going more for top-40 stuff, like B 104.

On Phoenix, Md., the town that surrounds the town of Jacksonville mentioned in the article:
Weitz: We used to play shows in Phoenix in high school, in, like, a basement. . . . We did these shoes a couple months back, and the girl who founded that company, Keep, she grew up in Phoenix, went to Dulaney High School. We were friends with her from playing shows around Baltimore in high school, and she had a couple of shows out at her house. The actor named P.J. Ransone, who was on The Wire [Ransone played Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka in Season 2] in one of those seasons, he also grew up in Phoenix and we knew him through playing in bands in high school, so we played a show at his parents’ house.

On how long Portner, who currently lives on the outskirts of Pikesville, plans to stay in Maryland:
Portner: I think probably through the end of the year. I’m starting to move on from New York. I’m just not as psyched on living there so much anymore. It’s a little crowded for me. And just trying to think a lot about moving out of the city, that’s another reason why it’s cool to be living here. . . . I live in the county, so it’s definitely nice to return to this kind of living. I spent so much time in the city over the past 11 years, or whatever that yeah, it’s just nice to get back to this. I haven’t spent this much time outside in a really long time, around trees and that kind of thing. So it’s definitely making me think a lot about future living, for sure.

On being back to your childhood home but living on your own:
Portner: I have memories of a lot of places around here, or places around closer to where I’m living, where like Brian and I would go hang out, at strip malls or something, and just smoke cigarettes. It’s weird to drive past one of those places every day. Not in a bad way, just it’s sort of surreal—just to be real close again to a place that you spent so much time around doing all these things. . . .  I feel like just living here, just having a place here that’s not with my parents or whatever, has made it totally different. I feel like it’s more of an experience that’s totally new and awesome.

On family dinners:
Weitz: On some of the weekends, we would try to have dinners. Dave’s girlfriend is a really good cook, and so we would try pretty regularly to get the kids together—like my kid and Noah’s kids—and have these family events. . . . When you’re at a dinner party that your friend’s girlfriend is throwing, and your kids are crawling around, and everyone’s drinking wine, you definitely feel like you’re your parents.

On having to alternate headlining duties with Black Dice in the early days, because the room would clear out, to sharing a bill at Merriweather:
Weitz: There’s the obvious reasons that you can’t deny, our music—our music, I don’t know about Black Dice’s—is a bit less abrasive and challenging than it was in those days. We’ve always sort of wanted to have a pop element in our music, but it’s definitely gotten less obscure over the years. Back then it was very buried in noise. . . . We did something together at Coachella, as well. And the videos that we’re doing on tour are actually created by Black Dice, and they created our stage setup for Coachella, so they came out there and brought their wives and stuff with them. It was about 10 years on from our first tour that we did it together. To be up there working together on something together in front of 50,000 people, yeah, it’s mind-blowing and kind of inexplicable.

Portner: Just seeing crowds like that, and realizing that it’s us doing it, it just blows my mind. I feel like it doesn’t stop blowing my mind. And the relationship with musicians and bands that we like and are friends with, and can just keep that kind of thing going, I think it’s awesome.

On the development of their music that has brought them to this point:
Portner: It’s felt pretty natural. I think it’s happened at such a, in a way, like a slow pace. It just seems like nothing ever really has felt calculated or seemed like a step we were using to—I don’t know, it’s just a varying visualistic way of approaching what we want to do with music. It seemed like it always fit our personalities and where we are in our lives. It never felt like we were being pushed into anything, or trying anything out for the wrong reasons. We’ve kind of just been psyched on what we’re making and try to always make sure that we’re proud of what we’re doing, and just kind of see where it goes from there. And I think we’re lucky in that way, that more and more people have followed where we’re going and where we’re at. I feel like we’re always uncertain about what will happen next. But it’s felt really natural, that’s the only way I can describe it.

On why you’ll only hear a couple of Merriweather songs at Merriweather:
Weitz: The significance isn’t lost on us, but I guess we’re ignoring it. It would be completely contrary to our instincts. We just don’t do that. You know, we had this at Coachella. People were expecting us, and even made comments, that it’s about time that, if we’re playing on a main stage in front of 50,000 people that we just embrace what a band in that position does. I even got an e-mail forwarded to me from the promoter at Merriweather that said something about like, I hope you’re gonna play the songs people are coming to hear. It’s just an attitude we don’t have, for better or worse. We hope people are understanding, but we are who we are and we do what we do. People seem to—you know, it’s gotten us this far. The only way for us to be honest and sincere up there is to do what we’re excited about doing.

On getting the chance to play Merriweather:
Portner: I haven’t been there in a really long time, so I have a hard time imagining what it will be like, being there [laughs]. Anytime I think about being there, I think about being on the lawn, or something like that. So it’ll definitely be way different being on the stage.

“Her tapes are bonkers,” Mountain says of the woman on the recording.

Play.

“God, I wish I could stop shaking,” says the woman.

Audibly, she shutters, shivers. Then silence for a beat.

“Let me go!” she shouts.

“Again,” says a man, presumably her hypnotherapist.

“Let me go!”

“Again.”

“Let me go!”

The woman starts to cry and then composes herself. She recounts how, in a past life, she taught the children in her village about herbs, leading to the townspeople burning her at the stake over accusations of witchcraft.

The tape, labeled “Past-Life Session June 22, 1982,” was merely one in a box of tapes sitting at a Waverly yard sale.

“Three hundred sixty-four days from now, this will be 30 years old,” Mountain muses.

For Mountain, born Alexandra Macchi (who, for disclosure’s sake, is music editor Michael Byrne’s roommate) and other purveyors of tapes, these sorts of personal artifacts are just one way that tape collecting is more than a group of people propping up a medium most have written off for dead.

“It’s a really small means of getting something that is really exciting and will open up a whole world,” says Mountain. “It’s literally a very small object, but I have this very small object that opens up someone’s life, whether they intended it or not.”

Among these: a recording of a mix of songs off the radio that includes a newscast reporting, “Yes folks, Bob Irsay has assured us the Baltimore Colts aren’t going anywhere” and a personal mixtape with really cheesy love songs from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Of course, the bulk of Mountain’s tapes–piled onto a shelving unit in crates, carrying cases, old clementine boxes, a tape-carrying suitcase, etc.–are a little more standard: bargain-bin flashbacks and brand new releases. You’ve got your Rhythm Nation and your Slanted and Enchanted alongside releases from local artists like Daniel Higgs and Dead Drums, the solo project of Lands & Peoples’ Caleb Moore. And there are the quirkier published titles–the Halloween sound effects tapes, the self-help tapes, the books on tape, and so on.

All of these kinds of tapes and more will be available for trade, for purchase or for general listening Thursday at the Windup Space as part of the inaugural edition of “Compact: A Tape Culture Night,” an event that celebrates all things cassette,  spearheaded by Mountain.

After DJing tapes–tapes are, of course, not discs, but Mountain is able to manipulate and mix songs just the same, using pedals, loop machines, and processors hooked up to a tape player–at Friendzday, a DJ night hosted by Unruly Records’ Derek James at the Ottobar, she wanted to expand on the idea beyond playing songs from an era when tapes were the dominant medium.

“People really seemed to like it, and I enjoyed it very much,” she says. “And then I thought, Well, it would be nice if we had just a free-form hangout kind of thing, because I thought there were tapes that I would have liked to play that were not so appropriate for having a dance thing.”

Attendees are asked to bring their own tapes to swap, to sell, to trade, or simply to put on display. Friends Records will bring its tape dubber to make their label’s tapes as both a way to knock out work and put on a sort of living demonstration. Mountain will again be manning the tape decks and taking requests in the form of whichever tape someone passes her way.

Much has been made in the mainstream media recently about the resurgence of tape collectors and the emergence of tape labels. For most, the cassette is an afterthought, and there’s little doubt of where it stands on the hierarchy for people who still buy music in a physical format.

Boutique labels can use tapes, Mountain says, to make an actual object and to make it nice without spending lots of money, but this can also be done with a CD or CD-R. So why the comeback?

In a way, it’s a form of escaping the constancy of the internet era and the instant gratification of downloading.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that tapes are a way of looking at it from the pre-internet era,” she said. “It’s existing alongside the time of the internet, it’s just like you’re taking a step back.”

But also, that step back is partially out of nostalgia.

“Tapes were the things I was listening to when I was a little kid and I decided I was going to fall in love with music,” she says. “And that I was going to be the kind of person who would rather spend more time hanging out, being motionless, listening to music than, like, playing softball or something like that. And that was a point of contention–you know, I love my dad, but it was very difficult for him to realize that I wasn’t, like, super fucking sporty. That wasn’t who I was.”

“I think these tapes are part of me,” she says, “figuring out who me am, who I is.”

Compact: A Tape Culture Night is at 9 p.m. tonight, June 29, at the Windup Space.

With “Before the Bridge”–released digitally earlier this week, the a-side of a forthcoming 7”–the group manages to up the ante with a song that is one of its most danceable and most dense. The addition of percussion from Double Dagger’s Denny Bowen allows a little more room for both Welmers and Cashion to work, and they use it wisely. The bass line just pops, and Cashion creates a bouncy groove that is likely to move even the most reluctant of dancers. Welmers opens and closes the song with sustained synths, punctuating the middle with airy little melodies.

If In Evening Air represented Herring pouring his guts out about a broken heart, “Before the Bridge” finds him no less somber, but slightly more reflective, as he sings: “I hope you have what you need/ I gave you soul and body.”

These developments can only make the anticipation for a third LP, whenever it may come, that much higher. “Before the Bridge” has all the hallmarks of a band hitting its stride. The record, which features the b-side “Find Love,” is scheduled to come out on July 19 and is limited to 750 copies. You can pre-order it through Thrill Jockey.

Future Islands, “Before the Bridge” by mbyrne-1

As will become painfully clear in just a bit, it was not known to this interviewer that such an ad existed. But Hunter volunteered the information, and would go on to describe how the ad came to be, what the decision-making process behind licensing the song was, and where the money the band earned from the ad will go. This part of the interview (find the first part here) discusses this at length and also looks deeper into what lies ahead for the band, Hunter’s philosophy on the ideal future society in the information age, and her upcoming solo gig in New York opening for Cass McCombs.

City Paper: There was speculation because of the Record Store Day release that you guys signed to Sub Pop. Is there any basis in that?
Jana Hunter: No, we haven’t signed a deal with anybody. We’ve been receiving offers, and we’re weighing our options right now. Since we’re not recording until June or July, there’s not really any pressure for us to sign with anybody immediately. We don’t need an advance.

CP: So what’s the big takeaway?
JH: What do you mean?

CP: How do you approach the future now?
JH: I don’t know that much will change for me from the way I’ve been operating, or that we’ve been operating. We work really well. We’ve kinda figured it out. We established early on, like, a story arc for our records—not really a story arc, but kind of more like a thematic guideline, and that might not even necessarily show up in the material on the record. [Bassist] Geoff [Graham] and I in particular are really interested in this particular time in the history of humankind being very much a transitional period, and so we kind of designed a thematic guideline for ourselves for writing these records, and we’re on to record No. 2.

CP: I’m sorry, what kind of period?
JH: A transitional period. Yeah, I feel like human beings are in the process of kind of removing the blinders a little bit, worrying more about themselves in the universe.

CP: When you say removing the blinders, how do you mean?
JH: I feel like our place in technology and people’s daily interaction with tools that facilitate immediate communication, leading to greater access to knowledge, generally it seems to me to have created a more honest situation. The kind of cross-pollination of fields of study, of cultures, in general, I think all of that is resulting in human beings having a greater opportunity than ever to kind of decide their own fate with more intention.

That’s kind of what I hope for the world and I like to think that thinking about those things kind of informs what we’re doing thematically. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the actual instrumentation of our music at all, but I feel driven by it none the less.

CP: So I guess you seemed pretty eager to talk. What did you want to get out there? Everything sort of came through in a stream of Facebook posts and Twitter updates.
JH: I think impulsively I wanted to express that I’m sad and the rest of this band is pretty sad about Will leaving, but that I’m not worried at all about that impeding the progress of this band. We’re not gonna break up. We’re gonna figure out what to do. We’ve made it through, I think, some pretty significant obstacles. And, you know, we’re a five-piece band now, we’re losing one member, that’s not gonna . . . you know, we’re gonna figure it out. That’s one of the things, mainly, I don’t want anybody to think that we’re gonna break up.

And I’m eager–maybe it’s premature, but I’m eager to start talking about the new record. I think because I’ve spent the last month listening to it every day. It probably won’t come out until the beginning of next year, so it’s probably really early to start thinking about it. But I also think it’s appropriate because we’re talking about a pretty significant stage in our band. At the same time that that’s going on, there’s a lot of excitement in our band with what we’re coming up on.

CP: You got anything else you wanna add?
JH: I’m doing a solo show in New York opening for Cass McCombs, and I’m really excited about that. I really love that guy. I think that his music only gets better. And we’ve talked about maybe doing some touring with Lower Dens later this year, but I’m pretty excited to be opening for him.

CP: Is it going to be your solo material or is it going to be Lower Dens material with just you?
JH: There’ll be a few songs that are older songs of mine and there are a number of songs that I wrote when I was writing stuff for Twin-Hand Movement. I probably wrote, like, 20 songs and we ended up putting 11 on the record, and there were a number of those that we didn’t put on because they, stylistically, didn’t work, but they work as solo pieces. So I’ll probably do a number of those.

CP: Where is that gig?
JH: It’s at the Bowery Ballroom

CP: When?
JH: May 12.

CP: And uh, anything else?
JH: Do you know about the Exxon commercial?

CP: The Exxon commercial?
JH: Yeah.

CP: No.
JH: That just came out the other day. We licensed a song to an Exxon commercial.

CP: Really?
JH: Yeah, and so . . .

CP: Why?
JH: They contacted us via our label, and our label took a look at it, I guess. And you know, probably in the scheme of things, not a huge amount of money, but a significant amount of money, so we considered it. Our first decision was that we didn’t want to do it, because even before we’d done any research in the company we decided we couldn’t get behind it.

Ultimately, we decided that: 1) not doing it wasn’t necessarily an effective protest of anything. And 2) we decided to give a bulk of the money toward–we’re setting up a donor-assisted charitable foundation. And that’s the primary reason for doing it. And the money that was left over is allowing us to basically work for the next couple of months while we’re writing the record.

CP: What’s the program, the donor-assisted program?
JH: Well, basically you can set up a foundation and it will go through–like, there’s a Baltimore Community Foundation–and if you have a donor-assisted fund, you give them the bulk amount of money and they advise you on what to do with it. So they will send you proposals saying, you know, this school program is asking for $1,500, we recommend that they do these things to use their money wisely and effectively.

So that’s the difference between a donor-assisted fund and just like . . .  I have a sister that has worked in charitable non-profits for her whole life and we went to her asking her the best way to make use of that money. None of us has ever really been in a position where we could donate any money, but it was something we had talked about, that we had hoped to achieve as band, so we went to her asking, What do we do to make this the most effective?

And she said this was the kinda thing where you get the opportunity to help a lot of different causes–you can do it based in your community, you can have an interaction with people and have, maybe, even some sort of a relationship with whatever most of the money is going to. And you can have someone advising you who has some sort of knowledge of the organizations that you’re giving to, as opposed to just handing it over blindly to people who may know what they’re doing and not be doing the best thing with it.

CP: Which song did they want?
JH: “I Get Nervous.” We talked for two weeks straight about it before deciding to do it. We tried to get them to change the song in some way–and they did, ultimately. But we were talking about it because–well, I guess we planned on talking about it regardless. Even though they changed the song, even though we re-recorded it, it still sounded like our song, you know?

I don’t watch TV. I don’t know a lot of people that watch TV. Like, you know, my mom watches TV. But it was a difficult thing for me to imagine what it was going to be like when it was, like, out there. But people have definitely seen it, and they’ve contacted us on Twitter and Facebook and been like, Is this real? Did this actually happen?

And yeah, I definitely want the opportunity to explain that we ultimately decided that we can actually accomplish something good out of that opportunity. Because [Exxon] would find someone else to do it, because, I don’t know what they would do with it, but I don’t think they would start a charitable foundation.

CP: But c’mon, Exxon? That’s one of those big monolithic corporations that everybody loves to hate.
JH: Yeah, and that may be absolutely justified. By no means do they have a glowing reputation. But I don’t think that anyone who has an oppositional stance to big oil is going to be persuaded otherwise by our alluring chord progressions.

CP: But I mean . . .
JH: I don’t think us doing the commercial is in effect an endorsement of their company.

CP: Kind of a tough sell to your fans, though, don’t you think?
JH: Well yeah, we definitely are risking offending people and we’re risking negative attention. But I also welcome the discussion, because I hope that people that listen to our music, or that know us, have thoughtful, educated opinions about the future of energy, and I think that we did what we did for the right reasons.

CP: I think that’s all I’ve got, unless you have something else.
JH: We also did a commercial for . . .  No, I’m just kidding. There is a rumor going around that we did a million dollar Microsoft commercial, and that’s not true.

CP: Where do these rumors get started?
JH: I don’t know.

[Pause]

I feel like what I was saying about the new record was really confusing. But I have this sort of like, I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but basically we decided that we were gonna shoot for doing four records, like, four good records and then see what happens. We were thinking about the Pixies, thinking about a lot of our favorite bands—actually me and Will talked a year and a half ago about this, and we were like let’s try to do four good records, and then we involved Geoff in the conversation. And Geoff and I are actually both really interested in the environment and human interaction. You know, like, I drive a car that runs on vegetable oil.

So we talked about our mutual interest in this subject and came up with the idea that we like best, the idea of humankind that we like best is like . . .  Our ideal scenario: Human beings recognize the–I don’t know, appreciate, begin to appreciate–the culture that they live in, the community that they’re in–develop an honest connection to their community, and then figure out ways to improve their communities or their race and then gradually move toward those better ways of living wherein human beings are treated more equally, you use the resources of the environment more efficiently to create a more sustainable ecosystem. And then as we learn to make our own way, gradually we do build a new society. Like a very, very utopian idealistic idea of what we wish for humans.

But that is what we decided to have guide us, and kind of each of those steps I described. Like, there’s not going to be a song about learning about water reclamation or something like that. But there is going to be this kind of sense behind the writing.

CP: Some people would probably argue that Exxon is the kind of institution that would prevent that from happening.
JH: Well, I’m definitely not the person to argue that on any kind of scientific level. I don’t have a complete understanding of what their company does. Obviously, I understand some of the fundamental ideas.

The most optimistic of my hopes is, whatever kind of environmental [pause] wrongs that companies might do, they begin to be more honest about their motivations for doing those things, that they begin more honest about doing those things in . . . It would be better even if somebody that’s engaged in doing things that are harmful to the environment and to human beings, and they own up to it; it is at least better than trying to mislead people into believing that they’re doing something other than what they’re doing. So that’s the first part of that, like, where human beings are headed is honest communication.

And the second part of my belief is that companies like that are capitalist, which is the thing I think that all companies should ideally admit from the very beginning, that they’re in it for the money, and that they’re going to make as much money out of what they’re doing right now as they can before they do something else. Energy companies are probably spending–I mean, I don’t really know what’s going on because I’m not an expert in any of these fields–but I would imagine they’re spending tons of money exploring alternative energies so that when it comes time to, when they’re forced to transition to alternative energies, they’re going to make as much money off of that.

So in my best optimistic outlook, companies like Exxon will at some point be responsible for the widespread use of alternative energies. I don’t know if that’s overly optimistic or what. Again, our personal, ethical standpoints didn’t factor into that decision beyond our desire to make charitable contributions.

CP: No, I mean, that certainly makes sense. But I guess when you hear about the [Transocean Ltd.] executives who have the oil rig in the Gulf [of Mexico], and they’re still taking their bonuses despite that really bad performance, I don’t know, that just seems too optimistic.
JH: Sure. I mean, admittedly, I just don’t know. [Pause] I don’t know what exactly I’d be welcoming by asking people to tell me what greater harm could have been done licensing that song that would outweigh what we were able to accomplish with it. But I couldn’t figure that out.

CP: You said you don’t watch much TV, but what is the context that they use the song in? You said people have asked you about it. Do they have YouTube links or something like that?
JH: No. People that have told me about it have said they saw it’s on during sports games, they show the commercial a lot. I have no idea what the commercial is. I still have not seen it.

CP: Pretty wild: sports games.
JH: Yeah. Yeah, I wonder who they’re trying to convince of what.

Monday evening I reached out to Jana Hunter, whom I’d previously worked with once before on a profile for The Washington Post–where I am also a contributor and have a day job doing music listings–to see if she would at any point want to talk about the state of the band for Noise. She seemed eager to clear things up, responding to the e-mail with: “Absolutely! Tonight or tomorrow morning would be best. That possible?” We arranged to meet at One World Café later that night.

After she arrived and ordered, we grabbed a table near the back. What ensued was a strikingly candid interview in which Hunter discussed, in great depth and detail, her take on the departure of both Adams and Sanders, the relentless grind of the band’s touring schedule, the struggles they had all gone through up to this point, the “workaholism” that continues to drive her, and the future of Lower Dens.

It wasn’t until Hunter herself brought up the name Exxon that I learned there was something of a minor controversy brewing over the band’s decision to license “I Get Nervous” to the oil giant for a commercial.

I expected the interview to last a little over 20 minutes; we ended up talking for nearly an hour. At points it was clear that Hunter was still deeply affected by everything that had gone on. At others, it seemed she was resolute about plowing ahead and seeing through the artistic vision she and the band had planned out.

Below is part one of a two-part transcript of our conversation. It focuses primarily on the band’s shifting lineup, group dynamics, and the events that brought Hunter and Lower Dens to this point. Part two will focus extensively on the band’s decision to license one of their songs to Exxon, how a significant chunk of the money received from the deal is dog-eared for charity, and what plans are in store for the next album.

City Paper: Espresso, eh?
Jana Hunter: I feel really cloudy. I’ve been basically, like, in one room for three days. I just need a charge.

CP: Is that as a result of this situation?
JH: Partly. I’m also decompressing from tour, and I’m still working on material for our next record. I’ve been getting it all on a computer.

CP: That’s hardly even decompressing. That’s like getting right back to work.
JH: Well, you know, that’s my favorite part of work.

CP: What exactly happened with Will leaving?
JH: I’m still a little unclear on it myself, but he called me the day after we got back. We left him in New York, that’s where his girlfriend lives. And he called [on Saturday] and said he wanted to talk about leaving the band, and that he wanted to do that, more or less, immediately. His reasons are really understandable. He’s really burned out; we’ve had a really heavy tour schedule. His girlfriend lives in New York, so he had less time with her than the rest of us had with our significant others and friends and family. And he said he just really didn’t want to be in a band anymore, and the idea of going on another tour was terrible.

And we talked for a while, and I tried to see if there was anything I could do or ask him why he hadn’t, you know—He said he’d been thinking about it for months, and I have no idea why he didn’t talk about it beforehand. I don’t know, he didn’t really . . . He’s not easy to read and he’s not always forthcoming, so I’m still a little confused about it. But this just happened. Can’t force him.

[Adams could not immediately be reached for comment.]

CP: He had to make the switch from guitar to drums. Do you think that might be part of it?
JH: Yeah. He didn’t cite that as a particular reason, but that was a really difficult time. We had a few weeks between tours and he was in New York learning the drum parts and he was also teaching my brother the guitar parts at the same time.

And he hasn’t played drums in a really long time, so he was spending long hours every day . . . He didn’t really get—I mean, none of us had a really significant break, because we had a lot of work to do during that time, but I think he got less of a break than anybody else did.

CP: Did he struggle with it at times, with switching to the drums?
JH: I mean he’s definitely more comfortable with . . . I mean, he’s a serious guitar nerd, he’s really good at it. It’s like an extra limb for him. And the drums he’s proficient at, but that’s not his love. There’s a good amount of anxiety with playing the drums. You know, playing drums, it’s a lot more obvious when you fuck up, at least to you or the other members of the band, and I think that finally got to the point where he started worrying about his role.

CP: Was there ever a point where you thought of bringing in a drummer, instead of putting him back there, and then maybe putting him back on guitar?
JH: We actually have a drummer. We found him right before the European tour, and we didn’t have time to get him up to speed or to buy a plane ticket.

And it was Will’s idea to do this temporary thing that he did. He was the one who suggested bringing my brother in and that he play drums.

CP: And who’s the guy you brought in to play drums?
JH: His name is Nate Nelson and he plays in town, in one of my favorite bands. They’re called Crazy Dreams Band. And he’s also in Mouthus. He’s great. He’s really good. He’s a stellar drummer, and I’m really excited to be playing with him.

CP: And there was the whole situation with Abe. What happened there?
JH: That was an amicable split. That was more our decision, the rest of the band, and I hesitate to go into details. But that was more something that we felt like needed to happen.

[When asked for his take on it, Sanders replied via Facebook: “I was ‘let go due to ongoing tempo issues.’ That’s the gist of it. If there were any other reasons, they weren’t expressed to me.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on anything mentioned specifically in my interview with Hunter.]

CP: With these lineup changes, an outside impression could be that things are—I don’t know, there might be something toxic there.
JH: Yeah.

CP: Or things are disintegrating a little bit. How would you characterize it?
JH: I think that maybe we could have done too much. We’ve been pushing ourselves, I think, as hard as we possibly could since we’ve been a band. Any level of touring can be difficult, especially if you’re not, you know, 20 years old and in it for the party. And we’ve done something like 200 shows in 12 months. We’ve been writing and releasing singles during that time. There’s basically nothing that we . . .  We went to CMJ, we played 11 shows. We went to South by Southwest, we played seven shows. We have taken very little time off and very little consideration for our mental, physical well being. And that’s what happened with Will, and what happened with Abe was a different story.

And with Abe there’s [pause] a seriously fun, wonderful guy who just needed to be doing something else besides being in our band, and I think that would have happened naturally anyway.

CP: You think he would have left on his own?
JH: I think that he would have eventually, yeah. He always seemed like the least comfortable with a lot of the things we were doing, you know? He had more of a free spirit, or something— like more of a bohemian [laughs]. You know? And we kind of like, you know, are robots.

CP: That doesn’t jibe, the bohemian with the robots?
JH: Yeah, I mean, there were times where we wanted to [pause] put a lot of consideration into aspects of the band that wasn’t his thing. [pause] And I think that caused a little bit of tension. And I think he started to lose interest, or it seemed like he was losing interest in the music, because you know, I don’t know, because I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but it was reflected in the way he played.

CP: Certain things he didn’t want to focus on? Can you be more specific?
JH: Um. [pause] Like we started to talk at one point about what we wanted a stage show to look like, once we got beyond where we were always playing DIY shows, where the only important aspect of the stage is that you’re intimate, face-to-face with your crowd, and you’re interacting with them on the basement floor.

We were spending a lot of time with bands that clearly put a lot of thought into that, a lot of thought into how to represent themselves on the stage without forcing typical rock ‘n’ roll behavior. We’re not that band—I’m not that kind of lead singer. We’re never going to be swinging the mic around or cracking crappy jokes. But I wanted, and other members of the band wanted, to make sure that our stage show was engaging, and that was the kind of thing that Abe thought was—he thought it was kind of bullshit to think about stuff like that.

I respect that mentality, like, you should be completely natural and let it all come about organically. But there’s also a good amount of merit to putting a lot of consideration into other things like that. And that’s what I’m going to do in this band, that’s what the rest of us wanted to do. But he did not.

CP: Obviously you went through this with all of them, the endless tours and all of that, and just grinding, so what’s it been like for you?
JH: I mean, it has been really difficult, but I definitely come from a family and a history of workaholism. There’s nothing that I like more than throwing myself into work as hard as I can. There are times where I’ve felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, but it’s almost impossible for me to say no to an opportunity to work.

And I know at this point that we need a break, and we’ve made significant strides in the last few months—we’ve figured out how to slow ourselves down a little bit without really losing momentum. One of the things that’s so confusing to me about Will leaving at this point is that I feel like we just did get to that point. Like, at the end of this Deerhunter tour, for, you know, the next three months, we’re playing like a handful of dates every month, we’re spending most of our time at home.

We’re writing during that time, and we’re probably recording during that time, but we’re not traveling, we’re not out late every night. Compared to what we’ve been doing, it’s living the life, you know? We even have a planned vacation, which, I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a vacation in my adult life.

CP: As a group? [laughs]
JH: Well, we’re taking time off at the same time.

CP: That’d be fun: band vacation.
JH: No, yeah. We could not do that [laughs].

CP: But um . . .
JH: Maybe Will is just sick of seeing our ugly faces during the day, you know?

It’s a lot of work at intimacy, even if you love the people that you’re with. They’re not your marriage partner.

CP: Was there tension on the road then? ‘Cause, like you said, that’s a lot of touring. Inevitably something will . . .
JH: We have in the past, yeah. We’ve had a lot of fights and a lot of emotional implosions and explosions. But something else we’ve put a lot of effort into was learning to communicate with each other, something like you would in relationship—being really honest with each other and trying to figure out what everybody needed from everyone else. Because it became a band, at some points, that if we didn’t do that, then we could not continue to function.

And I feel like we’re really good at that now. We get along really well, we work really well together. [pause] We’re relatively healthy, compared to how we were getting a year ago—emotionally and physically.

CP: Last year was pretty big for you guys, the record came out and got lots of praise, lots of critical acclaim. I think when we first talked, you know, you got all these great opening slots on tours. Everything was going right. What’s it like to go from that to this sort of point?
JH: Well, that never really stopped for us. The record only gained momentum. We only got offered bigger tours. Unlike a band that kind of, it happens, where their attention, or the rate of audience growth happens exponentially for them, all at once—we just kept developing. The record would get press in a new area or on a different blog or one of our friends who is better known than we are would talk it up. It was [a] really gradual development from our standpoint.

And that always felt great, and that was always an honor to be, you know, asked on tour. We did as many as we could, and there were more that we were offered and couldn’t take on.

I guess at a certain point it started to feel like if we didn’t, kind of like, fend off that snowball, that it would run right over us.

And also we didn’t have any time to write. It took me forever to figure out how to write on the road, and that was driving me absolutely crazy. I really think that I’m not content within myself if I’m not making music. Especially playing the same—we have, like, 15, maybe 20 songs in our repertoire, and we’ve been playing those [for] a year-and-a-half, two years.

CP: What did you learn that made that possible, writing on the road?
JH: I just feel like I’ve always written with a guitar and a tape recorder or a four-track, and it’s always involved shutting myself off in a room and isolating myself in time, and trying to be as removed from the world as possible. What I did was kind of try to create that environment again, which was as simple as, I bought a laptop and I got a mini keyboard, which I had never used before, and I worked out a deal with the guys where I got to have the back bench of the van, and I would write everyday on the tour.

We have, more or less, an album’s worth of songs, or close to it, that all exist on a computer in GarageBand right now. And then the band will take them in the studio and turn them into the real deal.

But it was actually really awesome. It got me through that tour. I didn’t really experience burnout on this particular tour because I was, everyday, in my own world—working on songs, writing. And since I don’t really enjoy keyboards, and I’ve never really written like that before. [I]t was engaging in the same way that it can be when you’re a kid and you first encounter a Zelda or a Bioshock, or maybe even Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2–an all-consuming, endlessly amusing time drain, only in this case the result is more rewarding than mastery of a virtual ocarina..

CP: So is this just an instance of biting off more than you can chew? Is that the sum of this?
JH: I guess so. I think the conflict between that and Will Adams’ inability to let the world know when he needs something. He’s the kind of guy like, we didn’t know—At some point on tour, he got pneumonia and didn’t let any of us know about it for two days because he just didn’t complain about anything. Then somebody noticed that he was feverish and coughing, and we were like, “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine eventually.”

We all got sick and realized we had pneumonia and we got it from him [laughs], because he didn’t wanna . . . He’s very stoic that way.

CP: And he’s an old friend of yours from Texas, right?
JH: Yeah.

CP: Has he always been that way?
JH: We were more casual acquaintances before I asked him to be in the band. We knew each other musically, and had played some music before, and got along really well via that medium, but were never tight before. But as far as I know, yeah.

CP: So what happens next?
JH: We start practice tomorrow with the four people who are currently in the band. We haven’t figured out yet exactly what we’re going to do about finding a new guitarist but we will. And we’re talking to Will to see if we can situate him to make it a little bit of a smoother transition, if we can ask for him to help us writing the record. Also really hard to imagine doing it from that end. You know, I feel like his . . . I feel like we could have made that record without him, but I think that he made a significant contribution to Twin-Hand Movement.

I think we’ll be fine. The songs, I have a lot of confidence in the songs that we’re working on. I think they’ll be good whether or not he plays, but it’s hard for me to imagine him not being on it. John easily can make that happen. Regardless, we’re looking for somebody to replace him playing lead guitar.

So yeah, we start practice tomorrow, we work with the new drummer, and then we start arranging the record in May, and we get it recorded in the summer, mix and master [by] fall at the latest, and it’ll probably come out early next year.

It’s actually going to happen. On July 9, the members of Animal Collective will take the stage at Merriweather Post Pavilion, the very same venue whose name they appropriated for their 2009 electro-art-pop masterpiece.

With guitarist Deakin back in the mix, and given the band’s propensity to focus on new material–material that they have all gathered in Baltimore currently to write and develop–it’s impossible to say what exactly this show will be like. Will they play a longer set filled with rarities? Will they play Merriweather Post Pavilion in its entirety, or close to it? All of that remains to be seen.

But something about this concert feels like a special event, like a coronation of Animal Collective as one of the most important bands in alternative music. And it also feels like an affirmation that, no matter where the members live in the world, something about this band will forever be intrinsically linked to Baltimore.

Tickets go on sale April 22 at 10 a.m. through Ticketfly. Information about prices or openers is not yet available.

City Paper: This album is a big departure from your first one. On the first one, people likened it to 8-bit music. Now it’s much more synth-pop. How did you go about writing that?
Benny Boeldt: The first album is certainly me learning how to write music, starting with writing on a computer, which is something that you can do without having much skill as far as being a musician. You can compose a lot on the computer. And now it’s like I’ve kind of moved on to using real instruments when I’m composing these songs. It’s been a lot more intuitive, and it’s changed the way I think about writing, and it makes it funner.

I’ve definitely matured as a writer and a musician in the last few years, and I definitely have a long way to go still, but it’s like a good middle point kind of. This new album, I feel, is kind of like that. Like adding vocals and recording all of my real synthesizers, it makes everything so much more dynamic. When you listen to the first album, you can definitely tell that there’s a lot of things I have to learn.

There’s a lot of songs that I still really love on it–you know, they’re my babies, or whatever–but I definitely see, and have seen for a long time, room for improvement.

CP: So what did you do to improve?
BB: You know, there was a while where I didn’t really think I was going to make another Adventure album. But after touring with the Dan Deacon Ensemble for a year or so, and going on tour with the band Videohippos, and just doing other things, eventually I felt like writing new music. It started off as doing some vague, ambient, synth atmospheric kind of things. My creative energies kind of started to come back to me after a long period of not doing anything with Adventure.

CP: You said you weren’t going to make another album? What was. . .
BB: Well, I didn’t know. I wasn’t planning on it; it just happened. You know what I mean? I just started writing. I started using words; I had never really sang before. And yeah, it turned out to be really fun, and a lot different than the last album, and something that I’m way more excited about now.

If I had made another chip-tune album, I feel like, you know—well, I just don’t think I could have. It wouldn’t ever have happened. I wouldn’t have been able to find that in me. Like, I’m not interested in making something like that right now.

CP: Did you sort of get sick of, like, having all these questions about video game music?
BB: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

CP: It was sort of like you were typecast in a sense.
BB: Totally. And when it comes down to it, I wasn’t really authentic chip-tune, you know?

CP: Sure.
BB: I made my stuff on the computer. I don’t really use Game Boys. I’ve messed around with that stuff, and maybe a little bit used it, but for the most part I used the computer. Actually, mostly I used a lot of stop-synth Moog samples, and that’s mostly what that album was. It was always a weird thing to try to have to explain that I could never really be fully a part of the chip-tune scene, because I was not really a chip-tune artist.

CP: And you taught yourself to sing [for this album]?
BB: I think that I started out writing those kind of repetitive tracks on the album, like, that say the same thing over and over again. Then as I got comfortable, and I had written a few of those, I started to write verses for some of the other songs. And now I’m getting comfortable doing that.

Maybe they’re not all in the exact order of what I wrote the songs in, but if you piece them together, you can kind of tell how my vocal learning process went throughout the album.

CP: Was it a lot of trial and error?
BB: Mostly trial. I don’t really have a voice. I just do whatever the heck I feel like doing. That’s just what came out of me, and that’s what I got.

CP: And you’re a trio now, right?
BB: Yeah, this is the first tour where I have two people playing with me.

CP: How’s that been going?
BB: It’s been going really well. Mark Brown, mainly he focuses on doing all of the visual aspects of the live show as well as running the computer. Anything that’s being done on a computer is run by him. And then Dave Fell plays keyboards with me now, and is also a really great songwriter, so I really can’t wait to work with them writing the next album. I think it will be a really big step up.

CP: What’s that been like for the live performance? The transition from it just being you up there, and then to have someone doing visuals and someone playing.
BB: It definitely builds my confidence. There’s way less reason to mess up when you have two other people there, playing with you. I would get pretty down on myself sometimes playing by myself. There was a lot of botched shows that were just, like, total train wrecks.

We are really getting tight on this tour, and it’s really fun—always. Even the bad shows are good shows, in a way. You know what I mean?

CP: Like in a learning experience kind of way?
BB: Exactly, exactly. Or just like, even if the sound in a club is bad, it still turns out to be a pretty good show, just because it’s funner, it’s fun to play with other people, and these new songs are really fun to play, too.

CP: With both albums, critics are quick to point out the similarities to ‘80s music.
BB: Oh yeah.

CP: That’s a big thing with a lot of bands right now, and I was just wondering why you thought that was so widespread.
BB: It’s something that I definitely recognize as being a major influence to me. There’s no denying that. It probably will always be a great influence on me. The ‘80s and ‘90s, that’s when I started getting exposed to music as a child. I assume a lot of people are having that same thing, I don’t know.

At the same time, all those sounds can be just as timeless as anything else.

CP: What bands, or what music of that era, impacted you the most?
BB: Definitely Depeche Mode and New Order. A lot of instrumental Moog music, like Mort Garson and all these—there’s a band called Automat that I’m really into, from the ‘70s. Dick Hyman, Wendy Carlos. I listen to a lot of stuff like that, just like weird, Moog, Moog-y, pop, instrumental, synth, soundtracks.

CP: Do you have anything else you want to add?

BB: It’s been a great experience, this tour. And like I said, I really can’t wait to start writing the next album. We’ve learned so much about what we like and what we don’t like about playing these songs live. It was definitely written by me not necessarily thinking about the live aspect of the songs. Like, performing them live, some of them it’s really hard to do, some of them it makes perfect sense. But when we write another album, I think it will be with a live show in mind. It’ll definitely be more intuitive to play live, and it’ll be with more than one mind putting forth ideas, so it’ll be really fun. I can’t wait for that.

The return

It’s been five years since the math-metal band of merry pranksters known as Oxes dropped some new riffage for us to savor. In the years following guitarist Nat Fowler’s departure for Italy, which he later left for Berlin, guitarist Marc Miller would go on to ply his trade in the “no-jazz” group Microkingdom, and drummer Chris Freeland would eventually develop his Beat Babies studios to become a local recording and production powerhouse.

Well, after playing rare gigs at last year’s Whartscape and an August date at the Windup Space, the band is set to release two 12-inch singles in May, titled “Crunchy Zest” and “Orange Jewelryist,” on the label Africantape and tour Europe. There are two versions of the song “Orange Jewelryist” floating around, a truncated three-and-a-half minute “radio edit” (lol?) and a nearly-six-and-a-half minute slow-building epic. The former is merely the latter with both ends whittled away. No matter, the meat and guts of the thing is a slow-tempo jam that plods along with plenty of metal god shredding from Miller and Fowler, at one point featuring one playing a buzzsaw riff while the other twists and contorts notes to ring like an air raid siren’s manic shriek. Freeland is mostly there to keep steady time, occasionally throwing in great little fills, until the last third, when he unleashes pounding percussion for a wall of guitar wails that eventually give way to power chords.

Hear both versions below.

<a href=”http://africantapegroup.bandcamp.com/track/oxes-orange-jewelryist” mce_href=”http://africantapegroup.bandcamp.com/track/oxes-orange-jewelryist”>Oxes<br /> &quot;Orange Jewelryist&quot; by AFRICANTAPEGROUP</a>