Animal Collective: four boys from the 'burbs banging out the call of the wild

In an era of musical Wal-Marts, Animal Collective are the equivalent of that weird old mom-and-pop store: You don't know how it stays in business, but you hope it will always be there. The band, whose members are now spread from Brooklyn to Portugal, met as preteens in the suburbs of Baltimore. Since then, they've released seven albums on various indie labels, in batches as small as 300 copies, drawing on influences as disparate as John Cage, medieval madrigals, and the strangely beautiful song craft of Syd Barrett. (The band's next, as yet untitled, is due out in October on Fat Cat Records.) Their live shows are also strikingly theatrical, like the performative rituals of a long-forgotten tribe.

"What we're thinking about when we make music is its ability to tell a story or paint a picture of a world," says Josh Dibb, who goes by the name Deakin. "It's the experience--not just a melody but also the emotion it implants in you. It's not like it's all completely random. There's a reason we want to hit a point of chaos."

Dimitri Ehrlich is a contributing music editor for Interview.

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