Pitchfork: I've always loved the playful side of Animal Collective, like on the song "College," from 2004’s Sung Tongs, which features just one line: “You don’t have to go to college.” What was happening in your lives that you thought, “Let's put this on a record and tell people that”?

Dave Portner: Well, three of us dropped out of college. And when I was writing those acoustic songs, I was just sitting on the floor of my apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the middle of the day. Stoned. I definitely didn't have a lot of money. I had been fired from a record store. I was just trying to get by. I was on unemployment. I didn't have anything going full-time.

I also remember thinking that the Beach Boys had a school pride-type song called "Be True to Your School," so I wanted to make the antithesis of that. I always thought it was important for my lyrics to come from a really honest place. Somebody came up to me recently in New Orleans and said, “Thank you for that song—but I don't want you to think that I dropped out because of your song.” But I think it's cool to give people encouragement. I didn't really know why I wanted to go to college. I didn't really have a reason to go there other than the fact that everybody else was doing it.

Josh Dibb: That era of the band was cool too because of the humor. There were other songs that actually evoked laughter from the audience at gigs, like "Prospect Hummer." There was one show at [shuttered NYC venue] Tonic where people started laughing multiple times throughout the set but they weren't sure if that was OK. Then Dave was like, “It’s cool, you can laugh.”