“The existential crisis is still looming – eight years in, 10 years in, its like, ‘Oh, I’m still doing this?’ Its kind of shocking.”
Meric Long, one half of San Franciscan art-folk-rock duo The Dodos, is somewhere in New Jersey. Long and his bandmate Logan Kroeber are making their way to New York, on tour to support their sixth studio album Individ. I reach him by phone and immediately congratulate him on the band’s 10-year anniversary, which is, it turns out, a media-generated fact that may or may not be true.
“A lot of people have been saying that, and it’s funny, kinda hazy… It’s not really going to be 10 years this year, but everyone has just rounded it up,” says Long, a touch exasperated. “When the band started, we weren’t looking past the next couple months. Every time we’d finish a record, we’d always think, ‘Alright, that’s our last one,’ but there’s always something that keeps it going. It’s like the piece of bacon hanging in front of our faces…”
Existential crisis avoided, for now.
When The Dodos first emerged in 2005, their sound was more folk than anthemic, more woody than wild, thanks to their acoustic guitar-and-drum set up. But after 10(ish) years as a band, evolution is inevitable. With each album and tour cycle, they’d steer further and further away from their roots, bringing in different musicians, instruments and approaches. With Individ, the band has come full circle, embracing the resilience that brought them so far in the first place.
“We were trying to bring in other instruments, bring in different people, try different things.. It’s been resistant,” says Long of their career. “It’s been hard to actually get away from that. So this record is like, OK, fine. We’re just going to do the thing that we do, and it’s not going to be anything groundbreaking but we’re gonna just stick to it.”
While Long may downplay his latest release in typical indie-rock fashion, there is something to be said about resilience, a common theme on Individ. They began exploring the idea as adaptive, changing and evolving, a reaction to some of the most tumultuous years in the band’s personal and professional history.
In 2013, the band released Carrier, an album that came out one year after the death of occasional touring guitarist and contributor Christopher Reimer (of Calgary’s Women). It was an event that shocked the entire music community.
Long was also dealing with his own personal tragedies, including the loss of his father.
“The resilience that I was thinking of was more like a stubborn, ‘I’m here, and I’m going to bother you just by being here. Try to protest or make a big scene, I just exist.’”
As for Reimer, “We only knew Chris for a year, but he made a very strong impression on us as a musician as well as a person,” says Long. “We had a different person touring with us every record cycle, I felt like that was going to stop with Chris. I thought he was somebody we were going to continue to collaborate with. I think about him all the time. He was a rad dude. He had a strong voice, musically. He didn’t question it.”
Musically, Individ can be as woody and percussive as their 2008 breakthrough album Visiter. Then, like the flick of a switch, they become anthemic, sounding like a joyful army of polyrhythmic drumming and metallic guitar, all while retaining their natural ability to sound effortless, something they have become celebrated for.
“We put a lot of work into it. If you’re [using] sculpting as an analogy, I see it like we’ve been working with the same chunk of rock, but over the years gotten more detailed,” says Long. “From a distance, it probably looks [more or less the same], but from where we’re standing at, doing this for so long, we’ve become way more detail-oriented.”
As the old saying goes, hard work pays off. In fact, last year the band even had the chance to play in honourary Canadian/first lady of new country Neko Case’s backing band while on tour with Case last year.
“[Her bassist] couldn’t play three or four shows, so [we] got called in to play bass," says Long. "It was literally two hours before show time. We all took two or three songs and learned the parts, and were in her backing band for a week. It was really fun.”
We continue to chat about touring in South East Asia, the woes of listing West African Ewe drumming as an influence on your myspace page (forever casting the band into “world music” purgatory) and the continuous existential crisis of choosing a life of art. One thing still remains – through the ups and downs, the beginnings and endings, The Dodos have mastered the art of catharsis. Here’s to another 10 years, boys (give or take), two resilient masters of their own universe who choose creativity over catastrophe.
“It’s inward, deeper into the rock, chiseling away and thinking [of] smaller details,” says Long. “The more detail we carve out, the more details [are] revealed to us at the same time.”
• The Dodos play Fortune Sound Club on Thursday, March 12, with guests Springtime Carnivore. Tickets $16 at Red Cat Records and FortuneSoundClub.com. Doors at 9pm.
