Photo by Atiba Jefferson

When I spoke with Animal Collective's Dave Portner (Avey Tare) yesterday afternoon, he was settling into his new home in L.A., where he moved just a week ago. The cross-country migration is a big change for Portner, who's lived on the East Coast his entire life and spent the previous year and a half living in Baltimore while Animal Collective worked on their forthcoming full-length, Centipede Hz. "Moving to Baltimore was supposed to be temporary," Portner says. "Having grown up there, it was not something I wanted to go back to. It's hard to be in a new place and know right off the bat if it's gonna be the right thing. It took me three years to really get into New York-- I hated it at first. So I'll see how this goes."

As a member of one of the most uncategorizable, shape-shifting bands of the last decade, Portner's used to change. Centipede Hz-- out September 4 in the U.S. and September 3 in the UK through Domino-- looks to be another left turn, this time from the aqueous, beat-driven bliss of 2009's breakthrough Merriweather Post Pavilion. Portner says the new album, which was recorded at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas, with MPP producer Ben Allen, has more of a live-band feel, with Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) back behind the drum kit. The album also marks the return of member Josh Dibb (Deakin), who sat out of recording and touring MPP. Dibb also takes a rare lead vocal on one of the album's songs, while Lennox sings on two tracks, and Portner handles vocals for the rest of the album.

"It was really important for us to do something that sounded a little bit rawer and more excitable [than Merriweather Post Pavilion].

The pace and tempos on this one are a lot quicker."

Pitchfork: How does this record compare to Merriweather Post Pavilion?

DP: To us, Merriweather is a terrestrial record, where you're looking up into space or into the sky, contemplating all this stuff. Comparatively, Centipede Hz is up in space, on a spaceship-- but it's a lot more grounded in one location than off dreamily in the clouds. Since it was all four of us this time around, the idea was to do something a little more live. Most of the rhythm tracks were recorded live by Noah; instrumentation-wise, he doesn't do a lot of other stuff on the record, except for some keyboards here and there.

The songs I contributed are more about thinking outwardly and observing things, rather than looking inward. As a record, it's all over the place. Every song has its own special world, and it moves along really nicely as a full piece. This record definitely sounds like an Animal Collective record. I think Animal Collective fans will be psyched.

Pitchfork: Were there any specific sonic influences for this album?

DP: The Cantina Band from the Star Wars bar scene? [laughs] It was really important for us to do something that sounded a little bit rawer, more excitable. Higher energy. To me, Merriweather has this more mellow atmosphere; the pace and tempos on this one are a lot quicker. We just wanted to do a lot of jammers, and not a lot of ambient, spacey stuff. It was nice to take a break from that.

Watch a teaser for Centipede Hz:

Embedded content is unavailable.

Pitchfork: What prompted you guys to work with producer Ben Allen again?

Dave Portner: We liked the way Merriweather turned out, and we found it really easy to work with him, so it just made sense. And Ben saw us live last year and wrote us this nice letter, saying, "I like these jams and I have these ideas about how they could be recorded."

We initially didn't know what we were gonna do recording-wise. We thought about doing it ourselves, but we weren't able to do any professional recording on our own. I think it's good to have somebody else there to run the equipment, or just to have someone else's ears. You can get lost in a hole of decisions. If you're on your own, you can't move forward.

In the long run, we'd like to move towards handling the recording process by ourselves. The process of writing this album was so much about the four of us working and writing together. At one point, there was a thought that we could just record everything as we went and, at different stages, we did record some material on personal digital recorders.

"Centipedes are alien creatures to us, and we wanted to

create this alien atmosphere. Also, the album's really

earth-oriented in terms of dirt and the ground."

Pitchfork: Is the title a reference to the arcade game Centipede?

DP: It can be seen as a reference to the video game-- more to the world of the game than the actual game itself. "Centipede" was also just a word that came up when we first started writing the songs. Centipedes have all these arms, and a lot of the songs have different parts and move all over the place. Centipedes are really alien creatures to us, and we wanted to create this really alien atmosphere. Also, the album's really earth-oriented in terms of dirt and the ground. There is something really organic about it.

Pitchfork: When we last spoke in 2010, you said that the band would probably tour less after the MPP tour. What are your touring plans for this record?

DP: It's not that we don't enjoy touring, because we like spending time together and playing music. But it's hard for Noah and Brian [Weitz, aka Geologist] to be away from their kids, since they're so young. I don't think we're going to be touring any more than we did for Merriweather; I can't really say if we'll be touring less. It's this continual process for us, learning what we like and don't like to do. I definitely think we're going to approach touring a bit differently-- where we tour, how we tour-- but I don't know if that means less touring.