FEATURE: Plants and Animals

When I showed up to interview Montreal’s Plants and Animals across the street from the Mod Club a couple of months ago, hours before a sold out show with Patrick Watson, the band had not yet arrived. Their publicist was there to greet me however, along with a box of freshly pressed CD’s entitled Parc Avenue. As the power trio arrived, they giddily tore open copies of the album, while inspecting the packaging, the Sgt. Pepper’s esque cover portraying a freak fest on Mount Royal, between ordering drinks. In February, the colourful debut LP was released into the world, and this is indeed a great cause for celebration. Parc Avenue’s mixture of gorgeous instrumentals, folky string sections, witty, unpretentious lyrics and sparingly scattered hooks is a distinct and ecstatic piece of work, sure to make a splash in the world of Canadian music. See the show, get yourself a copy, what else can I say?

Audio Blood: I’ve seen you guys live three times, once at Tiger bar, and then at pop Montreal opening for Grizzly Bear and just last week at the Drake. It’s been kind of cool to have seen the progression, from playing smaller shows like Tiger Bar to opening for Grizzly Bear and now Patrick Watson. Do you feel like this attention is out of left field or do you feel like you’ve earned it?

Warren: We just played a lot. We played a lot and met a lot of the right kind of people, people who wanted to work with us, so we just kind of ended up having to play shows which was ideal and then it just started to, y’ know… in terms of Toronto, with Tiger bar we had no idea, when we got there it was ridiculous, we couldn’t believe it, it turned out to be a great show. We made some friends there, we just kept coming back and it kept spreading.

AB: How do you feel about being courted by bigger bands like Andrew Bird and Patrick Watson?

Warren: Perfect really, it was more or less our plan to hook up with some bigger bands and play bigger venues. Our main plan was to keep busy until the record (Parc Avenue) comes out, in February. With Andrew Bird, it was out of the blue, they came to us, I have no idea how that happened, they heard about us somewhere. So that was nice, to know that people are hearing about us somehow, somewhere without us going to them.

AB: I think you guys have a really good three man dynamic, how long have you been playing together?

Nic: I can’t remember how it started, but it’s always been the three of us.

Woody: We had a bass player once, we played a wedding.

AB: how was the wedding gig?

Woody: It was amazing, it was in a barn.

AB: did you play any covers? I feel like people at a wedding would want to hear covers.

Woody: No, I don’t think we did.

Nic: We were kind of a weird band in those days.

Woody: and they were the apple orchard crowd.

AB: So now that you’re getting bigger and might start headlining at bigger venues, what kinds of bands would you like to see opening for you.

Nic: I don’t know…. U2?

Woody: We’ve been opening for people for awhile, so it’s hard to imagine it from the other side. I always liked the way that more successful bands take other bands under their wings, like in Halifax Sloan did with that with Thrush Hermit and they got big touring with them.

Ukula: I read somewhere that Warren is a Professor of sound recording and that Nic does musical theatre.

Nic: I used to compose sound design for plays. We all stopped what we were doing for the band, it was hard to be everywhere and the same place.

Ukula: What kind of music theatre did you do.

Nic: Modern plays. If they needed a car sound I would do a car sound.

Ukula: not like Broadway musicals?

Nic: no, plays, real plays. Those guys (Woody and Warren) played on some of the plays sometimes, it sounded really nice.

AB: what was it like being a sound professor?

Warren: I did for two years, last year and the year before, at Concordia. It was good, it was really unexpected, I never expected to do that.

Woody: He did his PhD just expecting to go into research (laughs), to research great sounds.

Ukula: you seem kind of young for a professor.

Warren: Ya, I look just like the kids.

Ukula: were you down with the kids?

Warren: Kind of, I tried.

AB: so you all met at Concordia, but two of you (Warren and Woody) have been playing music together since you were thirteen, I was wondering what kind of phases you went through.

Woody: I still play the same beats.

Warren: It’s come full circle now actually. We started with classic rock.

AB: So if you guys had made an album when you were thirteen it would have sounded like this (pointing at the album).

Warren: I think so, actually.

AB: Your songs don’t really have verse/chorus/verse structures, it seems to flow very naturally, in terms of song writing, how do you make your songs.

Warren: Some of them start small and grow from there. It might just be a small musical idea and then, we kind of build around it, other ones show up pretty much fully formed. Usually we don’t really see the outcome before we get to it, if you know what I mean, and maybe that’s why the songs don’t always organize in typical ways. Inevitably they kind of organize themselves, once you work on it enough. If you were visually thinking you just work for awhile and then stand back and then figure out what you needed to fill in this part, work some more, come back, and then by the end it may not have a conventional pop structure. People who are used to listening to conventional pop structures may find it really jarring or uncomfortable.

AB: Is it a collaborative process? Is one of you the musical genius? It’s Nic isn’t it?

Nic: It’s not me, it’s none of us. It all comes from space.

Woody: The spark usually comes from Warren.

Nic: Sometimes its accidental too, like we’re tuning and we’re like ‘oh fuck, that sounds good’, a few songs were formed like that.

AB: I saw an interview of you guys in Iceland, you were talking about the livestock,
Nic was saying he wanted to harpoon some horses.

Nic: I was really into hunting when I was in High School.

AB: Just so you know, it’s like the second listing when you search Plants and Animals on the internet.

Nic: That’s fine, (laughing) I’m going to have a tv show soon, I’ve been approached to do a TV show in Iceland about horses.

AB: How was Iceland?

Warren: It was Insane. It was great.

AB: Did you tour Iceland?

Warren: We played Iceland Airwaves (festival)

Woody: there’s only two places.

Nic: Reykjavic and Akureyri.

All: (Laughing) we did a tour.

- Dave Hurlow