Fresh Meat Monday - Plastic Animals

Would you care to introduce yourself?

Hello! We are Mario, James and Dave, collectively known as Plastic Animals, Edinburgh's favourite Peruvian/Scottish/Northern Irish trio.

How would you describe the music you make?

Badly, but we'll try our best. We used to play very simple, noisy punk songs and we still have a bit of that in us, but now try to write more interesting and layered songs, with a bit more atmosphere. And a bit more melody. One of our fave bands, Deerhunter, describe themselves as "ambient punk", and we'd like to appropriate that for us, although feel very unworthy in doing so.

How did you start out making music?

Mario picked up a guitar to help avoid the lure of the street-gangs of Lima. James found the drums to be a healthy outlet for his insatiable and previously undirected rage. Dave learned bass in order to complete the line-up of a Blink-182 cover band. We first played together in 2006 through a combination of personal connections and want-ads, and the shared influence of bands like Pavement, Pixies and Grandaddy.

What process goes into the way you write songs?

Mario is the creative engine. He usually brings some song ideas to practice; we play around with them, settle on a structure and then add bits until we're happy. They usually change lots until we finally record them. Lyrical inspiration just comes from cheery things like loss and separation, or everyday experiences and current affairs. For example, we have a song called "Gold Medallists" which is either about heartache, or frustration at the recent ticketing process for the London 2012 Olympics. We're still not sure.

What can people expect from your live shows?

Awkward banter, stilted movement and technical difficulties. Also hopefully a few good tunes.

What are you all listening to at the moment?

Mario: A healthy dose of Ozzy Osbourne’s first album “Blizzard of Ozz”. Killing riffs and The Scottish Enlightenment and Guided by Voices, The Lonely Island, particularly “Jack Sparrow” and a little bit of Beyoncé on the side.

Dave: Yo La Tengo, after their incredible show at Queens Hall last month. The new album from Something Beginning With L, who we played with recently. And also indulging my folkier side with some Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver.

James: Low, King Creosote, The Magnetic Fields and a little bit of Deerhoof.

What can we expect to see/hear from you in 2011?

Our new EP "A Dark Spring" will be available from 1st July! Very excited about that, and over the following months we're planning to gig until you're all as sick of our songs as we are. There are lots of new songs in the pipeline, some of which will hopefully be recorded before the year is out. We'd like to play a wee tour, but we seem to be under a curse whereby any time we play outside Edinburgh it goes really badly. Hoping to break that soon!


Plastic Animals - It Fell Apart

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