What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?
A lot of what you do is about how you look. You're a good-looking guy who plays music, and you can't do anything about what happens because of that. If people say, "He's cute. I'm going to go buy his album," hopefully they'll like the music, too.
In general, the musicians we met that made the most sense just said to do what feels right and try not worry about what other people think. I know that sounds stupid and simple. I feel like Neil Young has done that and he's still making albums. He's one of the people I really look up to as someone who has kind of stuck to their guns their whole career. Just making music for music.
One day, my father brings a cassette. He's showing me this, and he's like, 'Look at this guy, his name is Anthony Santos, like you.' I popped it on and started hearing the songs, the music, and I was like, 'Wow, this sounds great.'
I think something I've been drawn to about the people I work with is that they seem to be - like me - people who are a little insane, and have to make music. It's not a choice they're making for the sake of vanity - like it's cool to be in a band.
I love '80s happy music. I love Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, and the idea of making music that's about people celebrating fun. I spent my late adolescence in New York and I used to go to a lot of gay clubs. The music there was always just about love and connection and celebrating life. I think, for people going through something really hard, to go to a place where you can let loose and listen to music as a distraction, that's about a better place, a better way of life - that's where all the attraction lies.
I always think about fashion when it comes to making music and music videos... what the colours will look like, what the material will be, how will it work with the sound of the music.
By the time I got to set for 'Cobra,' I think I'd lost about 28 pounds in about a month and a half. I didn't want to look back and be like, 'Wow, someone should stop eating PB and J's.' Like, if I'm going to look back when I'm 80, I wanted to be like, 'Wow, okay, I looked pretty fit. I used my youth right.'
I listen to a lot of songs, and they aren't talking about anything. I don't connect with them. I'll listen to something like Musiq Soulchild's 'Just Friends,' and I'm like, 'Wow, I really feel what he's talking about.' That's how I want people to feel about my music.
I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs. But everybody in Grizzly Bear is full of ideas. So it's kind of boring to come to the band with a complete song and be like: "Here's what I want you to do." With this record, we wanted to make everything feel like everyone - music that we could never do on our own. That's a real gift, and it's one of the best things about being in a band like this.
Thinking about making a love story without music was really frightening, Sciamma admitted. Because every love story we know, we think about 'Titanic' we think about the music, we think about 'Gone with the Wind' we think about the music, we think about 'E.T.' we think about the music, and every love story has its own tune, 'That's our song.'
The nature of music fandom and music fans is that, very often, they fall in love with a band or a particular artist, and they really would like... I'm talking generally; that's not everyone. But a vast majority of the fan base would prefer the band to keep making the same record and the same style of music over and over again.
You got to look the part. You have to look like all the successful rock bands look. This is what they do. That's never been us. You know, it's a hard game to play: at the end of the day, we are just a rock band and have so many different cultures of music that we have grown up on, because we are fans of all different kinds of music.
I think for us, we don't feel like the future of music is in the act of being a record company. We feel like the future of the music business is in empowering artists to have better and better tools to communicate with their fans. We want to be people who are saying to artists, "Look, you don't need that company over there to release your album. You can do it this way." Almost more of a band partnership than a label-artist relationship. Not about ownership of content, but about empowerment.
We went from being thought of and talked about as "a band that plays a so-and-so style of music" (a grunge band, a stoner band, etc) to "a band that plays music with a certain sensibility or style to it". I'm not able to see quite what that is, but it's there and some people like it a lot.
I think my music being referred to as "cinematic" has a lot to do with people just not being used to listening to instrumental music without watching a film. I'm still pretty convinced of that. You'll play Chopin in place of something average and like, "Wow, that'd be great in a film." People say it every time, swear to God. I don't think people have a good relationship with instruments and music anymore. But it's definitely visual; I started writing with this band because of the pictures. I can't really deny it either, you know?
I really love when music artists like Lady Gaga or Michael Jackson wear outrageous things. Obviously, if I wore something like that I'd look like an idiot, but I really respect fashion.