HT Interview: Plants and Animals

Rarely will a band come around that encapsulates the full spectrum of what we try to do here at Hidden Track. As purveyors of improvisational music, indie rock, Americana and general open-mindedness, there’s a very short list of bands who embrace those same interests in one fell swoop. However, Montreal-based Plants and Animals are one of those rare anomalies.

[Photo by Caroline Desilets]

Taking their latest standout album, The End of That, as case in point, Plants and Animals take sharp sonic turns from track to track, embraces instrumental experimentation, writes concise and distinctive songs, and pull from endless musical references. It’s a gratifying album if for no other reason than to explore the diverse set of music you hear sourced (I thought of Ray LaMontange, Wilco, Built to Spill, Lou Reed, and Matthew Sweet in that order).

Gearing up for the February 28th release of The End of That, we spoke with guitarist and vocalist Warren C. Spicer to chat about the more approach they took in prepping material for the new album, their thoughts on all these references people associate with them, and art of balancing between improvisation and song.

Hidden Track: Getting started with the record, it seemed like a big part of the direction this time around was based on the preparation element. I wondered how important you think it is to go into the studio knowing what you want to do as opposed to what you did last time, which was a little more by the seat of your pants? How does that impact the way things come out and how you play things?

Warren C. Spicer: Well, I think it depends on the song. There are times when certain songs need a lot of work and time to reflect on, so you go in and work on it a little bit and you walk away, step back listen to it, and reflect on it. Then there are other songs that are better off if you barely touch them and you just jump into them in the studio and let them play themselves. Sometimes it’s hard to know which ones are which, but in a way you kind of know. The more complicated ones tend to need a little more thinking.

For what we did this time, it was way more prepared, and it was also just interesting to develop a bunch of material and not really have any idea which songs were actually going to be on the record. In fact, we didn’t even think of it in terms of writing an album. We worked over the course of the whole winter developing whatever it was we developed. We did some pretty far-fetched stuff, and stuff we knew was crazy, because we knew there were no consequences. We weren’t in a studio and we weren’t spending a bunch of money. We were just going to have fun and demo pretty much anything we wanted to. In that way, the process was really fun. Then you get in the studio and file it down a bit, but I think in the future we’ll probably work more in that way.

We had some success in the past the other way, going into the studio not really knowing what we’re doing. You know, just going in and having things fall together, but it’s a little bit too much of a gamble. You might come out with one or two things that are really good, but overall we’re the kind of band that fares a lot better if we actually work on stuff a lot.

HT: Were there some parts of this one that were not prepared or improvised that you thought came out particularly cool?

WS: Yeah for sure,  like The End of That, the song. That was the first time we’d ever really played it. It was like, “Hey, let’s do this song,” and Nick, the other guitar player and his girlfiend were both at the studio, and they came in and sang backups and danced around.  The guy who owns the studio was upstairs making a sandwich or something and yelled at him to come down, and he played bass. So we did like two takes and that was the end of that.

Somehow that spirit gets infused in the performance when that happens, because it’s not something where we did twenty takes or listen to a metronome to figure out if it it’s too fast or too slow. We just played the song. I think there are certain songs that are going to react a little better to that than others.

HT: Curious, how do you keep in check in the sense that you guys have the abilities to stretch out the instrumental elements but balance it out and often keep things concise? How do you find the right balance there?

WS: That’s a good question. I guess it’s a choice, really. I think you find the moments where you can stretch out. It’s part of the band and something we enjoy doing. We have that choice. Were definitely not just a band that has specific parts and everyone plays their parts. We do that too, but we kind of work around them and the parts tend to be different each time.

Again, it depends on the song. You listen back and think about what kind of approach you want to take; if you want to tighten up or loosen it. You kind of approach it differently with each song. We’ve been working on a bunch of new stuff since this record has been finished and it tends to start a lot bigger where you jam out an idea for 15 minutes. Then you go in and try to find the parts that make sense.

It’s almost too bad we can’t make more records faster or more often, because it’d be cool to make some really far out records and go a little bit more wild [laughs].

HT: So, I read a review for Parc Avenue that referenced Ryan Adams, Neil Young, Phish, Coldplay, the Polyphonic Spree, and Blitzen Trapper. Curious, of those bands, would you say you identify with most, or even any of them?

WS: Yeah for sure, some of them, absolutely. I think it’s a pretty good mish mash of pop, rock, and folk. Nowadays, there are really so many places to pull references. Polyphonic Spree is a band I’ve never even really listened to, but yet you’re in a band and you work on stuff and it ends up getting referenced by something you’ve never even heard before.

You read that often with musicians where someone is like, “You sound like this,” and they’ll say that’s weird, we’ve never listened to that band. I think that’s probably the case for a lot of people, because everything is so tightly interwoven musically now that no matter what you do, you’re going to end up sounding like something. It’s pretty hard to come out of the box and be unrelated to anything else. But yeah, on that list, we’re somewhere in there [laughs].

HT: So, it’s not very Canadian of you to only have three people in the band. How would you say having the trio core benefits you guys?

WS: Well, it’s just kind of the way we started. We have been touring with a bass player though, so we’ve opened up the live show. It’s a full four people, which has really changed things massively. I think in the studio, it’s fine. I mean, you can be one person in the studio and make an insane record, you know? Look at Stevie Wonder, he goes in and his record comes out and it’s called Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life. Obviously, there is more than just Stevie Wonder on there, and however he decides to pull that off live, you don’t really know. We did that. We went in there with three people with the production ideas and the songs in our head, not limited to three people, but we did it. And then we toured with just the three of us, and we didn’t really reproduce things. We just did the songs.

It really stretched our abilities. After working on this record, we were kind of saying in hushed voices, “Maybe we should get a bass player?” [laughs] We just happened to have the right guy, who is a pretty good friend of ours. Between me and Nick, we were trying to hold down a lot of the low end with the guitars and various devices, and trying to deal with it, but it was getting to the point where there was too much going on. It just didn’t groove in the same way.

It’s especially nice to concentrate on the singing. It’s so much easier to sing now without having to worry about if things are full enough in the low end. It makes it way easier.

HT: In terms of gear, how complicated do you guys get?

WS: It’s pretty simple really. Me and Nick, we just have two amps that we take out. One is a big high powered really clean amp with tons of low end and one is a smaller kind of old vintage tube. The big one is basically just to have on stage. It’s not really for any tonal qualities, just for that feeling of hitting a chord that moves you. You know, not necessarily being loud in the audience, but where you can actually feel the weight and the air being pushed. It’s really not complicated at all, just two amps and a couple pedals. It’s actually getting simpler and simpler, especially with the bass player.

HT: Would you say any of the songs mean a lot to you in particular?

WS: That’s hard, becuase they were all recorded back to back in a pretty limited amount of time, so they all feel very intertwined. Crisis was kind of a funny one. It’s such a weird song and takes such strange turns. It starts in such a weird place and ends in another dimension. It was kind of an exciting one to put together. I’m kind of happy with it for reasons other people will not care for, but it’s one of those things that when you make it, it was entertaining and surprising when it all came together. It’s a very strange song [laughs].

HT: Curious, how do you approach melodies in general. It seems like you guys tend to take thing in clever, less obvious directions?

WS: It usually just gets established early on before we have lyrics. So, we I just sing gibberish and the rhythm of the melody is pretty firm. I normally don’t try to be particularly crafty in that area, and it’s almost always a gut reaction what ends up sticking.

HT: Just one last question: In terms of venues, what are some of you all-time favorites to play?

WS: Hmmmm, what are some good ones? We just played Schuba’s in Chicago. We’ve played there a few times and it has a really nice vibe. My mind always goes blank on these kind of things. Oh, good gravy, I can’t remember any of the names [pauses]. Oh good, Nick is here. Hey Nick, what’s a great venue? Ah yes, the Paradiso in Amsterdam is amazing. There’s a lot of amazing ones, but I guess they are not that amazing, because I can’t remember any of their names [laughs].

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