Interview: The Dodos

“I remember one time I was at a Pantera show and the bassist signalled to one of the roadies to bring out a bucket and he threw up in it, without missing a beat, live on stage. They are one of the best live bands I have ever seen in my life.”

These may not be the kinds of words that you’d expect to hear from a member of The Dodos, but drummer Logan Kroeber’s isn’t a member of a band that are easily described or pigeonholed, I guess in a roundabout way this should be exactly what you’d expect to hear one of them say.

Following on from 2008’s label debut Visiter, this week sees the release of the bands latest release, the weightily titled Time To Die. And it’s worth noting that it’s a rather full-bodied affair. Roping in the production skills of current “indie it” producer Phil Ek and recruiting new member Keaton Snyder sees the band take a rather big step up from their humble two piece beginnings to one which now sees them sounding, well, like a “proper” band. It wasn’t all plain sailing though.

“Phil is a force to be reckoned with,” says singer/guitarist Meric Long. “And its weird because I can only speak of now from intention and result, but I’m still not totally clear on how Phil affected this album… he’s not the type of producer or engineer who’s like ‘come on, you can do it, you can do it little buddy’, just to get a result. He’s more like: ‘That sucks, do it again’. And I think that’s great… but when you’ve done sixty takes of the same vocal track in a row you could use a little support there.”

The resulting process is one which is far warmer and welcoming affair than 2008’s critically acclaimed and chaotically charismatic Visiter. “When we toured off of Visiter and got in another guy to perform those songs and I spent a year a half with a trash can behind my head, every night, getting pummelled.”, recalls Long with a look of disdain rarely seen outside of sporting rivalries; “… and for a while that was cool but there’s other aspects of this band I want to focus on. And I still think everything’s there that was there before, but we had more time to do it. We had a budget to do so we thought right… lets step up our game and do other things besides trashcan beating.” 

And other things they did indeed do.

“Its so funny, some people will describe Visiter as stripped down and chaotic and energetic but we stripped down the situation more for this record” says the bands’ skin-beater. “With just a guitar, drums & vibraphone and not trying to do like the kitchen sink writing with piano, toy piano and all this other shit. And its so weird how, depending on the listener, you can view this record from a different perspective, how we can view it from ours and how the record can be viewed on its own. It’s definitely something new from any which way that’s for sure.”

Though to some out there this album isn’t as new as it should be after it found it’s way onto the Internet a full two months before the original September 15 release date. The band combated the leak by streaming a high quality copy of the album on a specially created website in the hopes to thwart continual downloads.

“I think it’s fairly well beyond anything anyone can do. I mean, how many record sales do you really “lose” when this happens? I think it’s beyond impossible to calculate. Its more about how many people WANT to listen and how to track that response of that. Then hope those who do it come to the shows and support the band”, says Logan - clearly a calmer man than the one seen staring down the lens in the back of video posted soon after the leak. “And at this point, thousands and thousands of downloads later, it doesn’t matter who started it. It’s like a giant barroom brawl. You’ll never find out who started it. Either jump into the fray or don’t.”

“But rest assured, we have our best men on the job looking for the culprit”, adds Long with wry smile.

Previous live incarnations of The Dodos have relied on a third man, a roll previously filled by the aforementioned dustbin basher Joe Haener but now taken up with latest full time addition Snyder, helping to bring the newly found wall-of-sound to the stage. So how will the dynamic be different this time around? 

“Like Logan said before, we stripped down for this album and we become more of a band. Before it was a two-piece and all these other things were secondary. The way we worked before, created a lack of freedom. So whereas before when it came to performing to an audience who knows the songs who are like ‘that’s where the piano part should be, it better be there or its not the same’ and it’s not, it puts a constraint on the amount of freedom you can have on the road. But with this album we recorded the songs as a band and I really wanted to set this up this time so we could have total freedom on the road and that’s why Keaton is with us now. He allows us to have that freedom.” 

Though the band are very quick to reassure us that they still see Visiter as an integral part of what makes them who they are today; “I defiantly think Visiter is a good start for new listeners of The Dodos. I don’t know if I’d even like Time To Die half as much if I didn’t know how the band reached that point. But we’ve definitely enhanced the Dodos experience.”

That last statement is very true. Still the chaos reigns, the melodies dance and the charm pulls you in but, on Time To Die, this is a bird reborn. The Dodos are no one trick pony.

 “You know what, my dream is to be interviewed by a heavy metal magazine,” says Logan. “But not about what I play, I wanna talk about metal. … I want a kind of ‘Metal Off’ against someone who’s big in the metal scene. I want to prove those metal kids wrong who think that a Dodo doesn’t know anything about metal.”