You don't hear many albums that feature the eight-string bass as a lead instrument, and fewer still that incorporate the mighty hum of the pipe organ. But both of those voices are loud and clear on the new Animal, Surrender! album, A Boot for Every Bane, which finds bassist Peter Kerlin and drummer Rob Smith joined by organist Curt Sydnor for a suite of contemplative performances whose minimalistic approach only enhances their emotional impact. 

Shortly before the album's September 26 arrival, Peter joined us for a wide-ranging conversation about artistic inspiration, the compositional possibilities opened up by the eight-string bass, life as an indie artist in the 21st century, and more.

The first thing I wanted to let you know is that when I started doing research for this interview, I went looking for other interviews. And the first thing Google did was try to help me surrender my animal to a local shelter.

Yeah, it's a very sad thing to Google, as my friend Kendra said. Yeah.

What was the genesis of the band's name?

It was around COVID times. I was reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, and it deals with man and his... now I'm gonna mess this all up, but… the desire that human beings have to transcend their animalness. And there's a line in that where he says we want the animal to give up, to surrender. We want it to stand down, you know, the animal within us. It just struck me as an absurd notion, and I like absurd. I like band names that have absurd notions.

The idea there is that we yearn to transcend our animal nature and evolve?

Yeah, we want to escape it. tortures us. Our impulses, our desires, these unexplained proclivities we have that we don't always like about ourselves. But it's inescapable.

What's interesting to me is that this project's music is so stripped down, so simple, so elemental that it seems like it would be fundamentally at odds with the theory that inspired you to give it that name.

Huh. Well, yeah, I think… essentially when I'm writing, when I'm coming up with the melodic ideas or rhythmic ideas that usually birth these songs, it's from a place of like digging down deep, finding something more there. The possibilities that open up within a melodic or rhythmic idea. That's a mysterious, exciting moment, that feeling of being like, "Whoa, what's down there?" 

Because sometimes you scrape around on the surface, you know, recycling other people's ideas. "I kind of like that song, the way it does that thing. And then it goes to the minor sixth," or whatever. But where I get excited is when there's something mysterious that I want to explore.

Can you talk a little about the additional avenues the eight-string bass opens up for you in terms of that exploration?

Yeah, yeah, oh, that's cool. Thanks for asking. Yeah, the eight-string is something that I got sort of obsessed with when I got my first one — I want to say around 2013, 2014. People have always referred to me as a very melodic player. It's just where I go, where I lean in. I like to play high up on the neck, and so I was like, "Maybe this will open up some of these places, so I can play lower or I can use the whole range, but still be in this sort of melodic area." 

I was playing with Chris Forsyth at the time, and I picked up this eight-string and I was like, "I'm gonna play it tonight on this tune." We were playing a show, and it was a tune I felt really confident on and I plugged it in and I was like, "Okay, let's go." And as soon as we started playing it, I was like, "Fuck, this is not a bass. Like this is something so different. When I was in the situation of playing in an ensemble, I realized this is not doing what a bass guitar does. It's something totally different. So I put the thing down like it was radioactive, and I was like, "Okay, later time," but I sort of was like, "God, I've got to crack the code on this thing." I just experimented with different material and I'd hang it up for a while, and then it just started to click. After a while, I kind of developed this other kind of language on it. 

You know, it's a relatively new instrument. I think the first one was '68 or '67. Maybe it was before, but the first person I was aware of using it was Noel Redding and Jimi Hendrix — I think it's Jimi Hendrix actually playing it on Electric Ladyland on "1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)." There's a bass solo, which is on the eight-string, and that's a song I was totally obsessed with when I was in college. So maybe that was there, wanting to find that sound.

For somebody who describes himself as a melodic bassist, the eight-string would be a  godsend, right? Because particularly in this project, your bass is the lead voice. so it seems like there are so many more places you could go.

Yeah, one of the things I realized was that by playing fingerstyle on it, I play just the higher string and just the lower string. And I was like, "Okay, well then if I strum down, I get a sound that's more dominant to the lower pitch. And if I strum up, I get a sound that's more dominant to the higher pitch."

Not dominant, I shouldn't use that word. But you know, it's more defined by those pitches, and so then… when I first discovered John Fahey's work and Leo Kottke and these fingerstyle guitarists, and the way that the guitar becomes this whole world. When you listen to Fahey, sometimes there's other instruments, but it's an orchestra, it's like this ensemble. And I was looking for that, like a way to do that with a bass, even though it was like, "This is a terrible idea, who wants this?" But it was something I really had a compulsion towards.

What drew you to this musical world? I kind of dislike the term post-rock, but what drew you to work in this milieu? The droning and the really evocative but sparse instrumentation.

I think partly there's a stubborn avoidance of genre, which is funny, because then you end up in this post-rock box. But it's also all those bands I sort of fell in love with, like the Krautrock stuff and the ECM stuff. And so what you're hearing is people from a punk or rock background, incorporating these ideas from that material. So, you know, you end up in different places along this landscape, but essentially you're sort of in the same world, having a dialogue. 

Everything from Stereolab to those ECM artists, that's core DNA for me. There's this world of rock, and there's this world of jazz, and then there's this sort of space that opens up in post-rock that's very contemplative, where you're not like having these streams of notes come at you out of the speakers and you're not being bashed over the head with a 4/4 beat. There's a place where there's a whole other thing. You know what I mean?

It's sort of fusion without the horns.

Yeah, yeah. My last band, Sunwatchers, was marked with the fusion label. I mean, it fits.

It's funny that that's still a four-letter word for some people. I mean, fusion hasn't really been a thing since the late '80s, but still people are kind of allergic to the idea. But if you go back tShortly before the album's September 26 arrival, Peter joined us for a wide-ranging conversation about artistic inspiration, the compositional possibilities opened up by the eight-string bass, life as an indie artist in the 21st century, and more.or Weather Report, you can understand why it took off in the first place. There's an excitement when you're working outside established lines. Was there a formative record or band for you that drew you in that direction?

I mean, Head Hunters, you know, Paul Jackson. I must've listened to that record a million times when I only had like five records. That was one of them, and it's so great. It's so funny. It's smart. There's such facility. There's a great adventurous sound world. And it's you know, it's definitely done to death at this point, but it was a really important record because it's stubbornly avoidant of a box. And I just appreciate that.

I also thought a lot about Bill Frisell while listening to the new album.

Yeah. That's really great. Thanks. I mean, he's a master.

When I think of post-rock, I always think of Explosions in the Sky, and heavier stuff — not just heavy in terms of volume, but in terms of the emotions that the songs seem to want to evoke. But what you're doing here seems to be lighter. It's still very emotionally evocative, but it doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't really have the same melancholy, I guess, that I tend to associate with this whole scene. Is that intentional or is that just the place where you go naturally?

That's really nice to hear. Yeah, I think some of my work in the past has had that sort of feeling. People have described it that way. But maybe it's because the inspiration for it was more melancholic, I guess. Yeah, I think this material… this record really came out of this collaboration with Rob. I was trying to get Rob here for this, but our relationship has developed since the making of the first record, and it really informed the direction of this record.

Even though I'm bringing in the melodic material and a lot of the song concepts, there's sort of ongoing dialogue — not just musical, but hashing out ideas and sharing music.

The other addition here, obviously, is Curt Sydnor's pipe organ. It's also interesting to me that you, as a bassist, are focused on providing the melody here. And now you have this other piece that adds even more of a bottom end, sort of filling the space that you would traditionally be filling. Was that what you were going for, or were there just things about these songs that made you think, "I really want to hear a pipe organ"?

Well, it's cool how this whole thing came about. I made a solo record before Animal, Surrender!, a solo eight-string record called Glaring Omission. Curt was teaching my son piano at the time, and we started talking, and I was like, "Wait, we have a lot in common musically." He was working with Greg Saunier from Deerhoof and Yonatan Gat, who my old band Sunwatchers had played shows with, and we had the same booking agent for a while. So I asked him, "I'm going in to make these songs with this eight-string, you want to just come in and play?" 

We were at the studio Seaside Lounge, where they had this beautiful old Hammond C3. He laid down some organ and it was just like, this works so well, just harmonically, works so well with the eight-string. And then he moved away. He went to Virginia, where he got this job as a resident pipe organist and the music master of a church. And it turned out Rob also knew him, totally unconnected to me. They knew each other in the '90s when they were both in Nashville. I went into practice one day and I was like, "I've got this idea. I don't know what you're going to think of it." And he was like, "You want Curt to play pipe organ?" 

Curt said something when we were coming up with this idea, or when we were talking about how we were going to do it. He said, "The thing about the pipe organ is that it wants to be the whole world." I was thinking about what I was talking about with fingerstyle playing, and I was like, "That's what I'm trying to do with this eight-string." So we have these two instruments, or these two voices, that are trying to encompass and enclose. And so fitting the pipe organ into the compositions is this whole other thing, because it activates the air in a way that's really very hard to describe.

It's almost like that's the firmament of the song. The bass and the drums both can be melodic instruments in that context because they're being sort of held up by this big thing.

Big harmonic, yeah, that's just all this harmonic activation. And also, I mean, the instrument itself — it's a 120-year-old instrument. The pipes are made of wood, the mechanisms inside which open the air into the pipes are all made of these wood joints. When one is a little out of tune, Curt goes in and knocks on it. 

It's just such a great experience, being able to work with that organ. It's sort of like this organism, you know — it's activated by this wind chest, which is like this godlike breath that blows through these tubes. It's totally unlike any other instrument.

You're a husband, you're a father, you're playing music that isn't terribly commercial, and you're doing it in a city where it's difficult to survive. Streaming is not a source of revenue. Venues are dying. So what's your path? How does this project feed itself? What do you do?

Yeah, we're actually in my recording studio here. This is my creative space, but I also record and mix and podcast and do voiceover work here. We're fortunate to own our place outright in Brooklyn. We've been here 15 years, and we're just rolling along.

And how do you find your audience?

Well, that's a tough question. I think things were much clearer pre-pandemic. When I was in two steady touring bands — not massive tours, but between the two, there was a lot of road time and I felt we were expanding our audience by getting out to people. Since COVID, it hasn't been the same. There was something there that seemed like it was growing; it was like we figured out how to do it at a very low cost, and we were selling records because there was this whole vinyl boom happening, and people were buying records again. That's over, I think. So yeah, there's just so much uncertainty. The global geopolitical order is changing, and the economy is disrupted. 

I sort of feel like artists like myself don't really have that much agency, beyond being able to get out and do things in a very stripped down way and trying to reach small groups and play. I think the whole thing is contracted. And I think that's part of why, after the Sunwatchers broke up and we were post-COVID, I was like, "Duo." I mean, this record's a trio, so maybe we're expanding again, but I want to be able to play a bookstore. I want to be able to play small clubs, but I also want to be able to play record store gigs and also just be able to tour in my car with small amps. It's just part of this thing where... My old band had a record called Brave Rats. I'd just been thinking a lot about brave rats. 

It's sort of, I don't know if this is true, but my feeling of it is that we're scrambling. We're trying to find a way to do what we do honestly, and in a fulfilling way. And it's cool. It's also kind of liberating. If there's no world to hustle your way into and bullshit your way into, all you're left with is just you doing your honest shit. You know, just trying to make something that you feel good about and that excites you and moves your creative life into cool places.

The important thing is community. It's what kind of activated me in music. These dialogues you have with people that are robust, and keep us growing and keep us activated. I think there's an active effort to disrupt that. And there is an active effort to maintain it.

The last thing I'll ask is if there are any unsigned or indie acts in your listening life that you can recommend to people.

Yeah, well, I'm recording this band now, or I'm working on mixes today, actually, of this band New Pope, which is Clara Latham, who was in this group called Starring many years ago. It's Rob Thatcher from Oneida and Clara primarily, and then Michael Gallope on keys. Clara plays guitar and sings. And then Kid Millions — John Colpitts from Oneida — plays drums on the record. It was a lot of fun to record with those guys — we maxed out my space, had three musicians in the control room, all going. Anyway, it's a very cool record, what we're working on here.