Disclaimer: I was a kid when I wrote this so please withhold any judgements on quality
Anathallo’s latest album Floating World is one of my most treasured albums and being the nice guys (and gal) they are, they decided to let me interview multi-talented band member Andrew Dost.
Currently touring the U.S and Canada, Anathallo have been very busy, so I count myself lucky for the opportunity. Thanks man!
Thank you for interviewing me!
You guys have a very “pretty” sound going on, I can often imagine you all holding hands and sitting around a family dinner whilst singing haha.
That actually isn’t too far from the truth sometimes. Most of the band just moved to Chicago, and they’ve been having lots of pot-lucks and themed parties, so I think that’s pretty accurate. We definitely have our disagreements like any band, but things are the most fun, and creatively stimulating, when it feels like we’re a big family, so we try to nurture that atmosphere.
Ha, actually in all seriousness you have such a unique sound on the newest album. For a group with eight core members the creative process must be somewhat hectic, tell us about how you guys operate as a band. How does everything work as far as songwriting and coming up with such creative ideas?
It’s a pretty complex process, and one that I’d say is based more on relationships than on musical ideas. With so many people, with so many different ideas about where a song should go, a lot of the process is communication. We talk about everything, even ridiculous tiny details that we probably shouldn’t waste time with. But that’s the fun of it - everyone shares, we all throw ideas in, then we weed through and edit until we have something we can all agree on, something we all believe in and want to play night after night.
You recently started your own label with some other bands called Artist Friendship, can you tell us a little about this?
Well, we tour quite a bit. And that has led to some really great friendships with some amazing bands across the country. We wanted people who came to hear our friends, so we started carrying some of their CDs. We used to carry a few different bands and sell their records alongside our own - Bunkbed Nights, Foxhole, Colour Revolt, Javelins, Saxon Shore, and a few others depending on what we ran out of. It’s neat to be part of a community like that - all the bands sound drastically different from each other, but we really love all the music. We are really inspired by our friends, and we wanted to expand that community. Essentially, Artist Friendship was created to be a community for artists to create and be inspired by each other.
How did the idea come about to use some really unconventional objects like chains, velcro strips, stomp boxes and pipes? Any other strange musical input or instruments I missed?
Well, the ideas come in a number of ways. The most common is for us to be writing, and to envision certain sounds that our regular instruments just can’t make. The idea comes first, then we figure out how to create it in the real world. Other times, it starts as an idea to use a certain object, sometimes as a joke. For example, we used a cap gun on a song on Floating World, and that started off as a joke about how it needs to snap more like a cap gun… we laughed but then realized we might as well just record a cap gun, rather than try to make the same sound by hitting a ping-pong table with a yardstick.
I’ve noticed Anathallo is really starting to gain popularity and for a band which has been together for around five years, does it feel like a long time coming? How has the band itself or your “sound” changed from when you first began making music?
I think bands naturally change over the years. Anathallo started when all of the members were still in high school, and now most of us are college graduates, and there is a lot of growth that takes place during those years. It’s really nice that the tours keep getting bigger, and more people seem to know who we are, and know our lyrics. It doesn’t really feel like we didn’t get recognition before, though, because part of the fun of being a band is just being out on the road having adventures with your friends. So when we began, we were excited to just have a place to play and a floor to sleep on, if anyone came to the show, that was just an extra bonus. I think even now, it’s a little exciting when people don’t come, or when we play a new city, because it forces us to remember that we started doing this because we loved it, and that we still love it.
Can you tell us about the Japanese Folk Tale concept behind Floating World and why you decided to use it?
Essentially, the Hanasakajijii story is about a couple that finds a dog. The dog digs in their yard and finds treasure. Their greedy neighbor sees this, and forces the dog to dig in his yard, but instead of treasure, the dog only finds embarrassing and disgusting things. The neighbor is furious, kills the dog, and burns his body. But the good neighbor takes the ashes and scatters them in the wind, and the ashes come down as snow, and cause flowers to bloom. The story was something that sort of captured some spiritual, and some tangible elements that we wanted to come through in the album. It served as a nice springboard for the theme of the project, and I think we were all so moved by the story that it served as inspiration for a lot of the songs.
Floating World has such glorious art work, in some copies (NOT MINE) you also even packaged a home made bar of soap! Where is my bar of soap and can you tell us a little about the artwork and the idea to package a bar of soap?
Haha, you seem pretty upset about not getting soap! Sorry! The soap was packaged in the pre-orders of the album. We wanted to do something special for those, and soap kind of came up randomly in conversation after my girlfriend mentioned that she wanted to make some. We all had a soap-making party at the guys’ apartment, it was really fun, and we scented it with ginger, lemon, and orange. In each of the bars we put flowers and bugs to represent some of the lyrics. It was a mess, but we ended up making around 500 bars. I recommend it to anybody. Making soap is fun.
Recently you guys did a big gig at the Music Festival Coachella, tell us how this went and what were your favourite acts there?
Coachella was an amazing experience. We felt a bit out of place, as we were playing the same festival as a lot of people we really respect and admire. My favorite show was Rufus Wainwright. We also got to see Bjork, Gillian Welch, Cornelius, Rage Against the Machine, Grizzly Bear, and a bunch of others… It was almost an overload of incredible artists.
Being Christians, is avoiding being lumped into the Christian band genre and having it effect perception of your music something you wish to achieve? Do you find it difficult especially since you guys have already recorded an ep of hymns covers?
I think it’s something we used to worry about, but more and more we’re not really affiliated with that scene/genre at all. We definitely don’t consider ourselves a Christian band. We just make the music we make, and play shows we want to play, and whatever happens happens, to some degree, as far as audience perception goes. As for the hymns, I still am proud of that project because the songs are old, and have stood the test of time, and I think that’s pretty neat whether it’s a gospel tune, an old jazz song, or a symphony. It’s neat to express older ideas in your own way.
As Anathallo tours, you are playing songs from the new album you are currently writing. How does this new stuff differ from Floating World? and are we going to have any similarly interesting concepts?
For this tour, part of the intent was to play new songs primarily. Playing a song live changes it - you have to think about what’s actually working, what’s not working, what needs to be changed, things like that. We wanted this tour to polish the songs we have done, and get them ready to record. In June and July we’ll finish writing, then in August we’ll record. So far, there’s not a theme like Floating World had across the whole album, but there’s the same sort of imagery in any given song.
When you aren’t busy playing the majestic Flugelhorn, I hear that you write musicals for example you wrote an humourous epic about Christopher Columbus! What is the story with this and do you have any upcoming plans as far as personal projects?
Haha… guilty as charged. I write musicals. I hated them growing up, and only recently became enchanted with them as a way to tell a story. I have since become a huge fan of musicals and operas. Writing a musical is a bigger challenge than writing a regular song or album, instead of just saying whatever you want, you have to keep character voice, plot development, musical themes, and other stuff like that in mind. But somehow it becomes more freeing, because you get to put yourself into a different world. I was sitting in Biology class at my university, and just thought it would be really funny. I started scribbling down lyrics, and actually ended up using the project as my senior Honors project - so it actually enable me to graduate! Which seems ridiculous, but I’m really proud of it and it seems fitting. I’m writing two other ones at the moment, and whenever I get a spare bit of time from Anathallo I’ll be doing a full-scale recording of Columbus, which I’m really excited about. I can’t wait to see one of them performed someday.
Currently Anathallo is embarking on a tour through Canada/US, how are you finding it so far? Any countries you wish to tour sometime in the future?
We’d like to tour any and all countries. It’s a dream of ours, and we’re trying very hard to make it happen. I think Japan, especially is somewhere we’d like to play. Seth, our bass player, grew up there, and he and some other members recently took a trip there, and it sounds fantastic. Touring and playing music would be an amazing way to see the world.
Man I nearly like you guys more than my family haha, keep making creative music okay! (Also come to New Zealand with my bar of soap).
We’ll definitely try to get there soon. With plenty of soap. Thanks so much for talking to me!
By Jimmy Ness