Animal Collective

Did You Know?

• The band's 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion was their most commercially successful, reaching No. 13 on the US chart.
• The live album Hollinndagain was originally limited to 300 copies, each with a one-of-a-kind handmade cover.
• The band members first wore makeup and masks at their first show together in New York at The Cooler in late summer of 2000.
• Weitz and Portner started a duo named Wendy Darling, inspired by horror movie soundtracks like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Shining.
• All recordings from the summer of 2000, which Lennox called the basis for all later Animal Collective music, were stolen when Portner moved apartments.

History

Animal Collective started with friendships formed in Baltimore County. Noah Lennox and Josh Dibb became close after meeting in second grade at the Waldorf School of Baltimore. Lennox later went to a Waldorf high school in Pennsylvania, while Dibb attended The Park School of Baltimore, where David Portner had been a student since elementary school. In 1993, Brian Weitz moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore County and also started at Park, where he became friends with Portner.

Lennox has said their schools were progressive, focusing on creativity and artistic self-expression. Weitz and Portner began making music at fifteen, united by their enthusiasm for Pavement and horror films; their early setlist included covers of Pavement, The Cure, Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison," and Terry Jacks's "Seasons in the Sun." When Portner and Weitz met Dibb later in high school, they formed the indie rock band Automine with classmates Brendan Fowler and David Shpritz.

In 1995, Automine put out its only release, a 7-inch single called "Paddington Band." Around this time, the group first tried psychedelic drugs like LSD and started improvising. They got into psychedelic rock acts such as Can and Silver Apples, plus local experimental groups like Climax Golden Twins and Noggin. Dibb introduced Lennox to Portner and Weitz, and the four began playing together in shifting lineups, swapping home recordings and ideas.

Weitz and Portner, using a drum machine for the first time, formed the duo Wendy Darling, whose sound was shaped by horror movie scores, particularly the work of György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki.

Artistry and musical style

Portner, Lennox, Weitz, and Dibb began as lo-fi indie rock musicians, each amassing individual bodies of work on cassette tapes by high school. Influenced by horror film soundtracks and 20th century classical music, and sharing a passion for vocal harmony, the group progressed to what Portner described as "walls of drones with guitars and delay pedals and us screaming into mics." In college, Weitz and Portner listened to avant-garde records, while Lennox explored electronic music after hearing The Orb's UFOrb in boarding school.

When the group (without Dibb) convened in 2000 after recording Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, they conducted improvisational sessions using vintage synthesizers, acoustic guitars, and household objects. Lennox later called that summer a defining era. The following album, Danse Manatee, drew from freak folk, noise rock, ambient drone, and psychedelia. Genres applied to the band include experimental pop, psychedelic, electronic, experimental, indie rock, avant-pop, art rock, freak folk, noise pop, neo-psychedelia, and psychedelic pop.

Panda Bear explained the name "Animal" as reflecting a desire to act instinctually rather than intellectually. Lennox compared Portner's songwriting to that of Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham. For Centipede Hz, Weitz created an inspirational mix that included Pink Floyd, Portishead, Silver Apples, and others.