Avey Tare on the psychedelic sounds of Slasher Flicks

• Atiba Jefferson
• Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks

On the road supporting his latest album, Enter the Slasher House, Animal Collective’s Avey Tare takes up vocal and guitar duties alongside Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors) on keyboards and Jeremy Hyman (Ponytail, Dan Deacon) playing drums. Dubbed Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks, the group pushes its collective resume into an even more chimerical pop direction. Before making a stop at the Masquerade tonight (Wed., April 30), Avey Tare (Dave Portner) took a few minutes to talk about the conversational aspects of playing music in a group, his favorite songs, and how, since a young age, the paranormal qualities of psychedelic music and horror films have always worked hand-in-hand for him.

Enter The Slasher House is a bold but refined record that moves with more of a pop aesthetic than what I’ve heard in your previous albums. Is that what you had in mind going into these songs?

From the beginning, I envisioned playing these songs with a band, and I wanted them to be high-energy. I wanted to do them with Angel and Jeremy, especially because he’s such a high-energy drummer. I didn’t feel the need to create any kind of mellow moments. I guess “Duplex Trip” feels a little mellow.

I was trying to keep the happiness, or the good mood going. Saying “good vibes” sounds cheesy, but I was sick for much of last year and it was important for me to contrast that. When I wrote the songs for Down There I was dwelling in a darker world. So I wanted this to be a different experience. It became a collection of songs that I felt where stronger, and I wanted to keep them positive. I was also messing around with referencing more pop and eccentric music that I listen to. I usually don’t do that when I’m writing for Animal Collective and I definitely didn’t do that with Down There. It was an experiment to see if I could write these songs that were a little more traditional sounding, but still skewed by my way of presenting music.

What kind of music were you referencing?

No songs specifically, but a lot of older garage and psychedelic rock, and high-energy music like the Cramps or Devo. I’ve been listening to a lot of weird spacey funk music, and bands like Steely Dan, who I love a lot. Songs like “Roses on the Window” or the “the Outlaw” referenced stuff like that.

Did you write the songs or was it a band effort?

I wrote the structures and a lot of the parts, and I wrote bass lines for the demos. I wrote keyboard parts so Jeremy and Angel had an idea as to how I wanted it to sound. But the fun part about playing music with people is the intuitive conversational aspect of it. It’s no fun to be like: “You play exactly like this.” It’s not fun for me, and it’s not fun for a lot of people to play like that. If the bass has many different ways of being presented lets keep it open. Jeremy and Angel’s styles are specific to them and I asked them to play for that reason.

When the “Little Fang” video was released I read that it was influenced by a California pop. My mind went directly to Carl and the Passions, but I guess I was honing in on the happy vibe.

It’s definitely the happiest song, and the last song I wrote for the record. I go all over the place with a lot of records, and they don’t necessarily have one consistent quality. All the songs feel like they belong on the same record but “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles comes to mind. It sounds like the Beatles but doesn’t sound like anything else on Revolver. Not that I was trying to do that, it just seemed odd at first. I was like, “Man, I don’t know if Angel or Jeremy will like this song because it’s so simple.” Then we had fun playing it together. Angel was like, “This is going to be the song we wish we hadn’t written.” But it stuck with us. It’s such an easygoing feel-good song that it made sense to include it.

Who produced the record?

We did, basically. Most of the production happens before we go into the studio. We come up with all the sounds and everything. Going into a studio is a really cool experience. That’s why I choose a different studio for every record. I feel like you encounter new effects and new equipment that enhances the songs and the music, so the personality of the studio is in there too.

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There’s a sense of spontaneity that comes from learning the equipment as you go, too.

Totally, like I’ve never used this pedal before lets just see what it does and how it can affect this. It becomes the fun part of being in the studio too because you become interactive with the studio and the recording process ... Trying to track things and skin knobs and stuff as it happens. I love being in the studio for that reason.

Do you have a favorite song to play from this record?

I usually like a song because it stands out as something different from what I’ve done before. A lot of times it’s the most recent thing I’ve done. I like “Catchy (Was Contagious),” which was one of the last songs that I wrote. I like “Roses On the Window.” It’s hard to say, because you develop such a weird relationship working on it that it’s hard to have some normal perspective.

“Blind Babe” was interesting and one to hold on to. I like finding balance between simplicity and complexity. My musicianship never gets too complex. I find that a lot of complexity takes away a lot of the emotional aspects of the music. What music is, for me, is just emoting with sound qualities, sound sources, and making noise emotionally. That’s what I’ve always thought about making music. “Blind Babe” is the simpler side of things. It’s a song with basically two chords, and that crazy, trashy, junkyard, really fast beat. I made it on a drum machine and thought, “I don’t know if anyone I know can even play this.” I was thinking of Jeremy, and he had no problem. I like the way it cruises along, shifts in odd ways, but remains really driving.

“Strange Colores” strikes me in a similar way.

When Animal Collective did the Centipede Hz record we all did radio shows to present the album. Then we put them on a website and wanted to personalize them. I wanted to write a couple of short things for my radio show. “Strange Colores” was one of the songs; I wrote it based on a sample of a song by a group called Stardrive. I made the sample into a song, but didn’t use it on the radio show. Last year Slasher Flicks was asked to play Deerhunter’s ATP which was the incentive for putting the band together. Angel said we should do “Strange Colores.” It sounded good with all of the other songs so I put it together with the other demos.

With Animal Collective, everything we do musically we share with each other. We were practicing, and I had these demos and played them for Slasher Flicks and they liked “Strange Colores” the most. It’s not an afterthought, but it’s not the one that I thought was the jam. That happens a lot with me. I remember Noah giving us his demo for the song “Brother Sport.” It was at the same time that he gave us “My Girls.” I thought it was a good song, but it seemed really simple. I thought we’d have to work on it. But it turned out to be a song that people really love, and it’s an Animal Collective favorite. It just shows that people hear music differently, and it’s good not to pass judgment too quickly on the things you make. To me, “Strange Colores” is a really simple song, but simplicity is one of its’ strong points

Do you watch a lot of horror movies?

Yeah. It happens that I think Slasher Flicks sounds likes a good band name. In a world of so many band names it’s hard to come up with a good one. We never thought Animal Collective was a particularly good name, it just kind of worked with what we were doing. Slasher Flicks: I actually like the way it sounds, and Angel and Jeremy were psyched on it too. It comes from a place that’s more about something I like, not necessarily what I thought the band would sound like. I like a lot of old garage bands and punk bands, and bands like the Cramps and the Misfits that reference a lot of horror movies. Since we called the band Slasher Flicks I was thinking about the old ’60s garage rock bands and how their first record would be called Meet the Beatles.

From a young age, horror movies worked hand-in-hand with music for me, especially psychedelic music. Once you kind of open the door to the strangeness involved in both of those styles of art - ’60s psychedelic music with all of its effects and loudness, and horror movies dealing with paranormal activity, death, murder - anything goes once you open that door. Both take on qualities of unpredictability, and drastic shifts in mood. One is visual and one is sonic, but they’ve always been put together for me.

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Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks plays the Masquerade (Purgatory) tonight (Wed., April 30) with Bradford Cox (DJ set) and Dustin Wong. $15. 8 p.m. 695 North Ave. 404-577-8178. www.masq.com.