Avey Tare Does Not Want to Slash Your Throat

Dave Portner talks in circles. Well, not exactly circles, but when I call the Animal Collective member up on a recent afternoon, our conversation keeps coming back to the same topics: horror movies, how a record can capture a certain time in a person’s life, and making music that might be difficult to qualify as “music.” When he speaks, Portner, who’s better known by his moniker Avey Tare, is incredibly self-aware, stating one thing and following it up with something you could potentially view as contradicting. It’s not that the musician is inconsistent with his responses, but rather, it’s clear he wants to show that maybe he doesn’t have all the correct answers, that his perspective is exactly that: his.

“I feel like it’s crucial a lot of times in life, for me at least, to realize I don’t have control over things,” the 34-year-old says. “And this year brought that to a high point for me.”

His latest album, Enter the Slasher House (out April 8) is the debut record of his new trio, Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks. Alongside former Dirty Projectors-member Angel Deradoorian and Ponytail-drummer Jeremy Hyman, Portner has accomplished one of the most accessible pieces of art in his decade long career. On the phone, we discuss what breaking out of the Animal Collective mold has allowed him to do creatively, what it was like to go through uncontrollable illness (Animal Collective canceled their tour last year due to Portner dealing with strep throat), and how, he swears, Animal Collective doesn’t just make music to fuck with you.

You’re in LA now. Do you enjoy it?
Yeah. It’s been kind of here and there because I’ve done a lot of touring. The longest I’ve been here at one time has been like three months or something. It’s been a slow settling in, but for the most part, I do. I love California so it’s nice to have access to all the different parts of California.

How do you feel about the new record?
I feel good about it. [Laughs.] It came out, for the most part, how I envision putting a three-piece together, and keeping it psychedelic but letting there be a little bit more space for sounds to breathe and feeling like there is some room in there and in the sounds. Going into it, this was a different process because it was like writing the songs on my own with an acoustic guitar.

Did you write the songs solo?
Basically. There are parts that are embellished by either Angel or Jeremy—we all worked on it together—and I’d kind of lead it, saying something worked or didn’t work. But it was pretty open when we played together, to make sure we were working together and communicating musically.

How was this approach different than working with Animal Collecitve?
The writing for me wasn’t all that different. Over the years, I’ve just jumped around in terms of what instruments I use to write something—usually after awhile, a certain instrument will feel too comfortable or the songs I’m writing from it will feel too familiar. In 2004 or 2003, I wrote a lot of songs on acoustic guitar and after that, the same kind of thing happened—I just got tired of what was happening creatively, so I switched away from that for awhile. And in the past couple of years, I’ve come back to it.

What do you feel switching gears allows you to accomplish?
The kind of song I would write on acoustic guitar moves around in a different way, and a lot more, than a song I would write with, say, a sample, or something like that. I think that was something to get used to and to learn how to do and be inspired by, and now since I have written songs on acoustic guitar before, it’s more of a challenge to do something that I haven’t done before, making songs that I haven’t really made. I knew that I wanted to play guitar in Slash Flicks, so it lended itself to that too. I wanted to put together a band that was guitars, bass, and drums, respectively. So I kept that in mind while writing songs.

What are you trying to accomplish with this setup that you can’t accomplish with Animal Collective or solo?
Records for the most part, for me, are to document specific time periods in my life, or other people’s lives that were involved. Most importantly, that’s what this record stands for. It’s always going to be a document of this period in our lives. I was sick a lot last year, and had to spend a lot of time at home as opposed to out on the road, which was supposed to happen. The year changed drastically. And so a lot of the songs are me going through that psychological process. But I wanted to add some fun to that. I didn’t really want it to be “serious.” I don’t mean that it was a joke or something like that, but I didn’t want it to be this downer of a record, you know what I mean? In terms of getting a band together and it being a three-piece, I wanted it to be a very powerful experience. Over the past couple years, I’ve been listening to a lot more jazz than I ever really have—late ‘60s and early ‘70s stuff, which is a little more fusion-y, or whatever they say—and that’s influenced me a lot, to do longer song forms and stuff that’s a little bit more free. When I wrote the songs, they were really tight song structures, and when I started working them out with Angel and Jeremy, I wanted them to become more open ended and friendly. The jam part in “Your Card,” for example, is an open-ended jam and we didn’t want to keep it that long for the record, but it’s an example of one of the moments where let go.

You mentioned that records capture a certain time in your life. Can you expand on the past year, and how it’s been reflected in Enter the Slasher House?
It’s all over the place. It’s interesting that this is a group playing the songs, and not just me, solo, because my last solo record was more just about me [laughs] and what I was going through emotionally at that time. This collection of songs is more about a collective idea. “Roses on the Window” is a campy love song, and being lost in love or pleasure or that kind of thing. “Modern Daisy” is more about dealing with the hecticness of day-to-day life and trying to get stuff done. A lot of the year was about plans that I had made that had been broken. A lot of that creeps into anything—I feel like it’s crucial a lot of times in life, for me at least, to realize I don’t have control over things. And this year brought that to a very crucial high point for me.

What things did you feel like you didn’t have control over?
Most importantly, just going on tour and expecting that to pane out the way I thought it would be. You get used to these patterns in life—things become very comfortable—and sometimes you don’t realize that things can change dramatically. We’re all aware that happens with death and certain things like that, and everything from that side of life seems like it’s happened over the past couple of years. So those issues creep in. But then there are songs like “Little Fang,” which I feel like is a purely positive song and a purely positive message. It’s just something where I wrote when I was home just with my cat, and the song is about how she looks, which is kind of funny. She has these little fangs so it made me think about her getting made fun of by other animals, and me having to stand up for her, and just thinking about parents standing up for their kids being bullied. Like, if parents had a kid who was a werewolf, they’d have to take the high road and back the kid being a werewolf, and that would be a hard thing to deal with as a parent.

You’ve been making music for about a decade now, and to be frank, some of the first few Animal Collective records are hardly even music. How do you stay progressive with your output?
Music always keeps me excited. Fortunately, I’m not tired of wanting to be creative. To me, it’s always been important to not view it as a linear trajectory. I’m going from making chaos or chaotic noise to writing something that makes more sense to people. At this point, I have somewhat of an idea of what makes sense to people and what doesn’t make sense to people. [Laughs.] I can use that to my benefit—or maybe not—it’s an interesting thing because I feel like everyone hears music so differently. And it’s hard to make music on those terms—if I created stuff strictly based on people’s reactions. Music wouldn’t be as much fun, and I’d be a little bit more confused.

But for me, it’s a bit like what kind of music do I want to hear at the time? A lot of it comes from what I’m listening to lately, and it inspires me that way. Or trying to make sounds that aren’t out there. It comes back to what I said, putting myself in a record in the best way I can and documenting a time in my life.

That makes sense. With any new Animal Collective or project from you guys, I’ve always never had any idea what to expect. Did you guys ever just say to one another, while recording, “Man, this is gonna fuck with people.”
[Laughs.] Nah. Not at all, actually. It’s always just our own personal interests. You can fuck with people sonically. I don’t mean in a way where we consciously do it and are like, “Oh yeah, this song is gonna fuck with people.” I mean we’re like, “Oooh, let’s do this.” It’s kind of like psychological manipulation. And the reason for doing that is because while we were growing up, we liked it when music did that to us. We thought there were weird inside jokes put into people’s music. Or weird hidden things, you may have had to listen to a song 20 times in order to hear it. That was my favorite kind of music. So in that sense, if you can call that fucking with somebody, then that happens. But I don’t believe we, or I, have made any musical decisions purely based on that. Usually it’s just what I think sounds good.

What’s your relationship with horror movies like?
I love ‘70s horror. I always found there was an arty, psychedelic, even campy side to horror that I enjoyed. Even if it was campy or psychedelic because it wasn’t made well—I would always love the colors and weird effects they’d throw in.

How do you translate horror elements into a record?
There’s a cinematic way of approaching music that I feel like I’ve always had. It immediately is a visual thing to me. I guess a lot of it is in my head that way, and it unfolds as I’m making it. Those pieces are a necessity for this record. At first, I didn’t really have it that it would necessarily be that way, but as it started to unfold, I thought of it more as this cheesy haunted house, kind of like a funhouse vibe. That’s the way we can make a song like “Little Fang” work that’s next to something that’s a lot crazier, kind of like an amusement park ride.

It’s interesting hearing you talk about how fun the record is, when it’s literally called Enter the Slasher House.
It’s weird because you use words, and they have a very specific background and immediately bring things to people’s mind, and to me, maybe it’s just not that dark? [Laughs.] I’ve always just seen the campier side of that, with my group of friends growing up, we made a lighter side of that. It’s more comic booky to me, like thinking about those old illustrations of skeletons or ghosts or whatever. Not necessarily a super serious slasher movie. [Laughs.]

What’s your favorite horror movie?
It’s hard to pick a favorite anything for me. The Shining or The Exorcist probably, but I consider those some of my favorite movies—not specific to horror. But man, I don’t know. There are so many it’s hard to choose one. Halloween. Deranged. There are so many good ones.

It’s my duty as a journalist to ask if there is a new Animal Collective album in the works.
Ha, no. I feel like the way it’s been put out there, it’s gotten a little confusing. I mean, the real answer is yes and no, but it’s always that way. It’s always in the foreseeable future. Noah’s finishing up a Panda Bear record. Brian just had a baby girl. I’ve been working on this. Josh has been working on all these different projects. We’ve just taken time off from Animal Collective, but it’s something that we want to do. We still enjoy it, but nothing’s really planned.

Eric Sundermann still has some questions for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green, for Reverend Green. He’s on Twitter — @ericsundy

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