How to be an emotional cowboy- an Animal House Banana Interview

You’ll be releasing your new album “Emotional Cowboy” soon. How would you define an emotional cowboy?

This is a very good question. Cowboy’s are traditionally quite lonesome and manly, right? Well we wanted to turn that on its head. An Emotion Cowboy embodies the idea that the new frontier for men isn’t going faster or being stronger, climbing higher or earning more… it is understanding and expressing our emotions. Don’t be another cool and detached man, be an Emotion Cowboy.

How do you think your music could help someone become an emotional cowboy?

The idea came about because the album is a bit of an “emotion wheel’. There was some pretty rocky things but also some great things happening throughout the process of writing this album and so what has come out is a broad spectrum emotion. There’s anger, love, powerlessness, insecurity, but also fun and nonsense. So in answer to the question, have a listen to the album, see what it conjures up for you. Music is all about context and memories so maybe it’ll drag up something uncomfortable for you, or just be a bit of fun. Either way, you’ll be on your way to becoming an Emotion Cowboy.

You’ve been releasing music since 2014. How has your sound evolved since then? Do you think that the music industry has changed during this time? If so, how?

Our music has perhaps become more of our own, a little more thoughtful and a little less pure party vibes. But the essence of fun is still there, even in the more cynical songs. The music industry has been massively affected by Spotify. Our first album was really a giant playlist of single after single. It worked really well for us but it’s also tiring being expected to pump out continuous content. Whilst we’re still going with a similar release schedule for Emotion Cowboy, we took a bit of a step back to relieve the pressure on just pure content for content’s sake. Some call it lazy. But sometimes an Emotion Cowboy needs to take a step back and chill.

We’ve seen some videos of your concerts and the experience of listening to your music on streaming platforms vs live performances seems entirely different

What challenges do you face during the recording process?

If listening to your music via streaming, sets one mood and via concert, sets another: how would you describe those moods?

I’m surprised you say this because a lot of people say that our recordings do our live show good justice. However, it’s all about context innit. We like to get pretty rowdy at our shows and encourage the crowd to get pretty down and dirty. Occasionally that has spiraled into a very sweaty pit, but mostly it’s dancing. Streaming our music could maybe be uplifting, or feels like kind of “driving with the window down” vibes… I dunno, different for everyone I guess.

If you were a…robot?

I would be a Joke Robot, designed to deliver jokes to people’s desks in a proper robotic monotone, then force them to laugh at my jokes upon threat of destruction

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?

Blink 182. WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUU

A part of your body you can brag about

Will and I (Jack), have often argued about who has more massive calves. They’re both massive, but we ended up measuring and Will’s unfortunately, were slightly bigger. Also, have you heard of a hair fight? You each basically pluck a hair from your head, put them around eachother and pull. Whoever’s hair breaks the other’s is the winner. Will also won that.

Worst criticism about you ever received

Our lyrics were once reviewed by a distinguished BBC Radio Presenter as “Poetry, straight from the back of a toilet door”