Since releasing Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2009, Animal Collective have mostly laid low, as the band's members explored solo material and raised their families. They called it a "hiatus" of sorts, but Animal Collective haven't been gone for long. In fact, the group are currently holed up in Baltimore plotting their next album.
"We're working actually right now," Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) recently told Exclaim!, adding that the band have been writing together since January. "We've never had so much time to work on songs before, so it's kind of new, unchartered territory in a way."
While previous Animal Collective albums have seen the songwriting duties mainly split between Lennox and David "Avey Tare" Portner, the new material has the rest of the AC contributing as well.
"There was still people bringing songs to the table, but this is the first time that I can remember at least that we're kind of starting from zero," Lennox explains. "That was by necessity before. We had to kind of prepare before we would get in a room together because we're living all over the place... That's why we wanted a lot of time to be able to make it happen and we really wanted to do the whole process in a different way than we're used to."
Lennox did not divulge how far along Animal Collective are in the process, but the band did debut a series of new tracks earlier this week while on a mini-tour of California on their way to Coachella, which kicks off today (April 15).
Of course, earlier this week, Panda Bear also released his Tomboy album, which is currently streaming here on Exclaim.ca.
You can read more of Exclaim!'s Panda Bear interview here.
"We're working actually right now," Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) recently told Exclaim!, adding that the band have been writing together since January. "We've never had so much time to work on songs before, so it's kind of new, unchartered territory in a way."
While previous Animal Collective albums have seen the songwriting duties mainly split between Lennox and David "Avey Tare" Portner, the new material has the rest of the AC contributing as well.
"There was still people bringing songs to the table, but this is the first time that I can remember at least that we're kind of starting from zero," Lennox explains. "That was by necessity before. We had to kind of prepare before we would get in a room together because we're living all over the place... That's why we wanted a lot of time to be able to make it happen and we really wanted to do the whole process in a different way than we're used to."
Lennox did not divulge how far along Animal Collective are in the process, but the band did debut a series of new tracks earlier this week while on a mini-tour of California on their way to Coachella, which kicks off today (April 15).
Of course, earlier this week, Panda Bear also released his Tomboy album, which is currently streaming here on Exclaim.ca.
You can read more of Exclaim!'s Panda Bear interview here.
