Avey Tare Interview: Making Sound And Putting It Together
When you’re listening to Avey Tare solo or even his work with Animal Collective, you’re waiting for that moment: a scream, a jittery melody, chaotic percussion that pans throughout the speakers like ping-pong balls. His latest album, 7s (Domino), has almost none of that. A subdued, reflective affair, 7s was born out of a desire to collaborate. In 2020, Animal Collective had just finished making Time Skiffs remotely, and Dave Portner wanted to channel his creative energy into in-person collaboration. Of course, during the early stages of the pandemic, the inability to (wisely) be in the same room as many others disrupted just about every facet of life, let alone every line of work. Portner, ironically situated in the musical mecca of Asheville, where he’d have a murderer’s row of collaborative choices any other time, felt depressed, and a bit lost. Luckily, he did have Adam McDaniel and Drop of Sun.
Unlike on his past records, Portner went into 7s with very little ideas of how his songs, casually written during 2020, would take shape. During the first week of 2021, he and McDaniel spent three days with achievable goals--a guitar part here, percussion there--and emerged happy even if they only got half done what they set out to do. It’s these initial sketches that inform the aesthetic and ultimate vibe of 7s. The first song Portner had for it was the 9-and-a-half-minute centerpiece “Hey Bog”, originally written to play on his 2019 tour for Cows on Hourglass Pond. Ambient and rubbery, it’s easy to get lost in before strumming and thumping percussion enter, his ethereal, yet outwardly emotive singing combining with the instrumentation to make a sort of New Age acid house. The rest of the songs were sculpted around “Hey Bog”, from the trilling tribute to essential workers and good deeds, “Invisible Darlings”, to the ever-anxious shuffle “Sweeper’s Grin”. Though Portner’s words are devotional and grateful, they’re also extremely uncertain. On “The Musical”, he converses with himself, questioning how he came to be as a musician. The woozy closer “Cloud Stop Rest Start” seems to be one of many moments where he questions humanity’s motives, referring to the impersonal nature of COVID data and inherent, yet unavoidable selfishness of living during a pandemic. “Oh American stranger, is it always like this? Losing things to spikes and the ups and downs?” he sings.
Those ups and downs, albeit of a different type, have continued ever since for Portner. Of course, live music would return about a year and a half later thanks to an unprecedented, life-saving vaccine, but the still volatile nature of COVID would mean Animal Collective had to cancel their EU/UK tour as recently as last October. Time Skiffs and 7s were released last year and this February to critical acclaim, and Portner still finds time to work with McDaniel. “We’ll...just get together and make something and record,” he told me over the phone from his home last month. “He’s always down.” Portner knows that there will be trials and tribulations, but just like his and Animal Collective’s approach to playing live, it seems as though he’s starting to look at everything--studio albums, careers, life, and everything in between--with a sense of wondrous improvisation and honesty, no matter how messy.
Read my conversation with Portner below, edited for length and clarity. Catch Avey Tare at Sleeping Village tomorrow night. Lipsticism, the solo project of local musician and producer Alana Schachtel, opens.
Since I Left You: Animal Collective finished Time Skiffs remotely, and it led to a creative streak for you at a time when people were working by themselves. What specifically for you led to this period of being prolific?
Dave Portner: When I have time around the house or time off from touring, I try to write songs. It’s a big part of my day, my time in the studio, my work. During the transition from 2020 to 2021 in particular, I was getting more and more depressed about being cut off from collaborating musically with people. It’s such a big part of my life. We had planned to record Time Skiffs together in the studio, and that couldn’t happen. [It] isn’t a bad thing in terms of process, but quarantine and 2020 and the pandemic, having me shut in so much and not able to do anything beyond going outside of my studio, led to a lot of cabin fever. I was craving musical collaboration with somebody.
It worked out that Adam McDaniel, my friend, had this studio called Drop of Sun. We just decided to be really relaxed about it. I had a lot of time around the house, so I started writing these songs. [We blocked] off three days at the beginning of January [2021], because I had to get out of my house and into another musical environment. At that time, Drop of Sun was one nice studio room in his basement, and the whole Drop of Sun team was working on building this new studio, which was done by the time we started the mixing stage. But even starting in his basement, it was nice and crucial to be able to bounce ideas off somebody. I didn’t have a huge game plan, just basic structures of songs I wanted to start working on and see where they would go.
SILY: After this time period of less collaboration or remote collaboration, it seems like the journey from the demos to the finished product was pretty seamless. It that true, or were there bumps in the road?
DP: No, it felt really good. We started with three days, and when they ended, we wished we had more time. We had to do other things here and there. Allowing myself to step away from things and go in every day with a goal of, [for instance, “ finish] this guitar part” or a few ideas I wanted to accomplish, [felt] really good. We started wanting to do more and more.
At the beginning, I didn’t know what 7s was. It was just me recording some songs. As we got towards the end, I was still working on “Invisible Darlings” and wanted to get that in the fold. I had “Hey Bog” already, which I wrote in 2019 when I had solo shows and wanted to put new songs into the set. I wanted to record that one for a while. Since I knew it would be a centerpiece, or at least on the record, it was a matter of fitting other songs around it. I think that’s why 7s feels like it has one foot in the past and one foot in the present and future. I wanted everything to feel cohesive and not too random; it was just a matter of building it from the bottom up in Drop of Sun. That’s not usually how I do my solo records. Typically, I’m planning them beforehand when I’m off from Animal Collective, and I know what I want to do. This one was created as we went, even though the songs were kind of written.
SILY: Do you think the casual vibe of the recording made its way into the quality of the songs? “Hey Bog” and “Sweeper’s Grin” are relaxed, reflective, melancholy songs. In other words, did the anomaly in process allow the songs to breathe more?
DP: Definitely. Having a lot of time at home to work on stuff and play them, it was a very introspective time. There were melancholy thoughts that went along with that, and there were happy thoughts, joyous thoughts, anger. Music and making and recording music is often a very cathartic process, especially when I’m doing stuff at my home studio. I’m working through a lot. The same is the case with 7s. I [was] working through the emotions when recording and doing the vocal parts. Some of the vocal parts were written and created as I was recording them. It’s really relaxed working with Adam, because we’re good friends, and at the time, there was nobody else around, so we set our own limits and time and let it feel good. “The Musical” and “Invisible Darlings” had a couple different versions we tried, and having the time to not feel rushed about it helped them because we took the time to really find the place for them.
SILY: This all reminds me of when you sing on “Sweeper’s Grin”, “Happy to be carefree / Do tell.”
DP: It’s kind of a cynical question. Some interpret that as me saying I’m happy to be carefree, but it’s really somebody else saying they’re happy to be carefree, and I’m like, “Oh, really? Do tell.” What’s there to be happy about? The world is crumbling. That’s not my typical worldview or outlook on life, but it comes into my mind sometimes. That side is there, so I want it to be there.
SILY: Is that also why you decided to end the record with “Cloud Stop Rest Start”, a bit more of an uneasy track?
DP: For sure. I also didn’t see that song going anywhere else.
SILY: On “The Musical”, you sing, “I wonder, how is it explained that a person comes into the field of making sound and putting it together.” Was that something you were wondering especially when making 7s? Is that a question you get asked a lot?
DP: I feel like I’ve [lately] been a lot more interested in conversational songwriting. That’s me starting to mess around with that, which isn’t something I’ve done before. I haven’t been so personal about my process of making music and my place in music. Asheville is a musical place. I’m around a lot of musicians, and there’s a lot of history of music with Appalachia, people doing all kinds of stuff. Being in this environment, I have friends that play music for the joy of making music, and they’re not so interested in a record contract.
There are a lot of people in the music industry frustrated or trying to figure it out for themselves. It’s been a transitional period, which I was feeling at the time. I had a lot of thoughts about Animal Collective and 2020 and the pandemic. It was a big shift for us. This wasn’t an attempt to answer those questions, just saying what’s on my mind.
SILY: Last October, Animal Collective cancelled their European tour. It seemed like a reality check for people not in the music industry, to see this very successful band unable to tour for financial reasons. Do you still sort of feel like you’re in that transitional phase?
DP: There were a lot of factors that went into cancelling that tour. In some ways, the band is always in a transitional phase because there are so many things we want to do alone and together. It gets complicated to map out. There’s a need these days to really map out your future in the music industry, and probably in a lot of other fields of work and life. People need to plan far in advance, which is difficult for us, being so spread apart. There’s a lot of complicated things that go into setting up a tour and getting together to practice. There were a lot more hurdles, the fact that COVID was still peaking pretty hard during the tour, and having gone through cancelling shows because two of the band members got COVID, myself being one of them. The risks were just too high. It wasn’t fully because we were in transition, but beyond that, the music industry is in transition. Musicians need to get on the same plane and same field and work together a bit more. I think we can work through the transition to make tours happen and not have these kind of worries, and make everyone who wants to tour able to tour. There are so many musicians and bands out there that want to tour, and because we’re such a name already and people know us, it’s fairly easy for us to get shows. I feel like stepping back and letting newer musicians [step up] is the right thing to do, to let people have their chance. It’s tough these days.
SILY: Do you think something like the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers is a step in achieving more equitable touring?
DP: I think so. There’s a certain state of being and frame of mind. A lot of musicians have different goals. For some, it’s not all about making money. There are many different reasons to do it. That kind of thing is helpful, but I don’t think you’re going to get everybody on the same page. It’s a little bit more than just getting everybody in the same union.
SILY: You just mentioned that you feel like other industries are also in flux, which reminds me to ask: On “Invisible Darlings”, are you singing about essential workers during the pandemic?
DP: I am, yeah. I’m trying to sing about anybody that would go unnoticed in your regular day. It could be an essential worker. There are people in the music industry that do a lot for a band that take a lot of crap, too, or are overlooked when they make the night go as smoothly as the music does. It’s also about people that do simple, good deeds, like holding the door open for someone else or pick up a fallen bag of groceries.
SILY: Is the album title simply a reference to the number of songs on the album?
DP: It is, but 7 is an important number for me. I wanted to have that energy be part of the record once it seemed like 7 songs is the way to go. I usually run with stuff like that on my solo records and Animal Collective records.
SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?
DP: I’m really into collage and trying to take my own visual art in different directions. It’s some sort of landscape, for me, the psychological landscape of the record. You could call it dreamlike, and I’ve referred to it as surreal, even though that’s pretty vague. I’m influenced by the surrealists and [André] Breton’s work.
SILY: Do you think the music on this record is equally influenced by surreal visual artists?
DP: I’m very influenced by visual mediums, film, art that I see that affects me. During the writing and recording of Time Skiffs, I had been reading a lot of surrealist essays, diving deep into the short stories and essays of surrealist writers.
SILY: During recording, do you ever have images projected or displayed to inspire you?
DP: I do. We’ve done that with Animal Collective since Feels. Projections, visual accompaniments. In my own studio, maybe not when recording, but when writing or jamming, I’ll put something from my computer on and let it play. Old cartoons--I was in a real Rocky and Bullwinkle phase. He-Man. Any 50′s/60′s abstract avant-garde stuff. It’s all over the place for me.
SILY: How are you adapting these tracks to a live show as compared to how you’ve adapted past material?
DP: I’m trying to keep the set pretty diverse. I’m playing from all my records. In terms of playing live, I’m never trying to recreate the record. That’s not very interesting to me. A live experience, as a performer, and I hope for the audience, too, should be something different. If you want to listen to the record, you can stay home and listen to the record. There are strengths to [7s], though, that I can’t look past. [I want to keep] pretty true to the vibe of the record. It’s just gonna be me on stage, using sequencers and playing guitar, mostly. I’ll do some acoustic songs. I want it to also feel organic and like a live experience. It’s a balance between finding the strength of the record and feeling like I’m making something as I go.
SILY: What else is next for you and the band?
DP: We’re finishing up a new Animal Collective record. We hope we can put it out this year, but that will depend on our label. I’m finishing the artwork now.
SILY: How did you find the experience scoring The Inspection? Would you do it again in the future?
DP: Definitely. That’s something else we’re trying to wade into more and more and get deep into, being able to do scores and have a reputation as musicians who would like to do that. The Inspection was a positive step in that direction. It got some good attention. It was tough work. It was a challenge to step out of our Animal Collective comfort zone, which is how doing scores is gonna be. It’s a driving factor in our creative communications: We look for challenges, for things outside of ourselves to instigate a change for us. Having a cool film to score is just what we need in that regard. It’s an added creative outlet for us. [We made] a long format video, ODDSAC, with our friend Danny Perez. We’ve always loved psychedelic, horror, and sci-fi films, which is why The Inspection, [a drama based on a true story,] was [even more of] a challenge.
SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?
DP: Right now, I’m reading a collection of short stories called Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki. I’m a big sci-fi fan. Music-wise, it’s all over the place. I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff from my vinyl collection, a lot of older stuff, since I’ve been working on artwork and [that’s] where my turntable is. I listen to a lot of jazz, Chico Hamilton, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra. When I’m making visual art, I listen to less cohesive, more improvised stuff to get in that zone. I like the record that Eric Copeland and Josh Diamond made last year, Riders on the Storm. Good electronic grooves. I like a record called Felicita by Anadol. It’s a little more out-there, [an] experimental record. A lot of the bands that I have opening for me on tour, Paradot and Anastasia Coope, have music they’ve just put out or [that’s] coming out that I’ve been listening to a lot. That’s why they’re opening up for me.
