With SXSW just around the bend, anticipation about which new bands will emerge from Austin’s annual musical carnival builds by the day. One example of how a band’s trajectory can be positively influenced by SXSW is Brooklyn’s Freelance Whales. Since their memorable performances in Austin last year, the band has drawn much attention for it’s creative use of unusual instruments, polyphonic vocal work and interesting background stories. While the band will not be returning to Texas for the annual affair this March, it’s only because they’ve been touring Europe and will soon embark across North America. Drummer Jacob Hyman spoke with us in the meantime.

Apes on Tape: First off, you guys have had quite the exciting winter with your European tour. That just finished up, right? How was that for you?

Jacob Hyman: It was great to finally make it over to continental Europe. We’d been to the UK twice before, and as a bona fide anglophile, that’s been an amazing experience for me, and a surreal opportunity for all of us. Once we finally got over to the mainland, we were surprised at how many people were coming out to shows. It’s really gratifying to play a city for the first time and have a packed house with people singing along. And half the time they didn’t even speak our language!

AOT: There’s been a lot of talk about the band’s origins including busking throughout NYC? Did that really play a huge role in the development of the band’s sound and aesthetic or was it just sort of a minor story the press picked up and ran with?

JH: In many ways our early public performances were hugely influential on the shape the band would eventually take. The “busking” aspect of our subway and street performances has certainly been a bit overblown – we never did make any significant amount of money. Just enough to pay the rent for our old rehearsal studio in Queens. What we did gain from performing publicly, though, was twofold: we grew together as performers, especially vocally; and we put ourselves out there for people to find. In his book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about finding “mavens” and “salesmen” and “connectors,” and by exposing ourselves (nonsexually, of course) to an unsuspecting public, we were able to catch some of those people by surprise at key moments.

AOT: Speaking of NYC, you swam upstream from a lot of the musical trends currently going on there. Was that a deliberate effort to try something different, or am I just analyzing things too much..?

JH: We weren’t trying to buck any trends, but I also don’t think you’re overanalyzing. On the one hand, we do listen to a lot of music – both modern and not-so-modern – and those influences are difficult to avoid when writing. On the other hand, there is a certain trend right now of shunning the past and riding only modern waves. When Judah was writing the songs for Weathervanes, he was just allowing the instruments and themes to inspire him in whatever way they did without judging from whom or what or where that inspiration was coming.

AOT: Could you give us a bit of background on that first show at the Staten Island farm colony? Was it a convenient place to be able to play at then, an escape from the city or what?

JH: It was just about as far away from convenient as a place can be short of having to get onto an airplane! We were trying to challenge ourselves, and given the dichotomy of dark and jubilant themes of some of the songs on Weathervanes, it seemed like a fitting place to go. We had been practicing for a couple of months at that point and were eager to get a show together. So we decided to break the seal and just put on a show for ourselves. Shortly after that we had our first official acoustic show, which was followed a couple of months later by the full-on electric on-stage shindig.

AOT: In a relatively short time you have had the chance to play with some really great bands, (Fanfarlo, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Tokyo Police Club, Shout Out Louds) Was that intimidating? And did one particular band stand out as a blast to be with?

JH: The bands themselves are almost never intimidating, and I mean that as a good thing. In our experience, at least, there is a very strong sense of kinship with bands that are on the road together. There is usually a good amount of joking around and by the end of a tour we’re just a bunch of battered old soldiers on our way home. (Note: soldiers definitely deserve more sympathy than we do. Sorry for the horrible analogy). There’s also a lot of shared excitement and a sense of accomplishment and culmination about playing certain places that mean a lot to bands…for me, Webster Hall with Fanfarlo in December of 2009 is the most glaring example. A homecoming and an end to our first tour…it was an important night for us. And those shows – the ones that feel “important” – also bring with them a sense of intimidation, which presents itself as nervousness. It’s weirdly nostalgic to get nervous at this point, but we all do sometimes (Lollapalooza in Chicago and Troubadour in LA come to mind in particular).

AOT: Your performances at last years’ SXSW shined quite a bit of light on you guys. Are you bummed to miss it this year? Perhaps a bit nostalgic for the days of less formal shows? Or are you just jazzed to have earned the proper touring experience now?

JH: We’d love to have it both ways, but given the absence of a new album this year, we thought it might be good to save ourselves for SXSW 2012. I don’t think we’re too nostalgic for less formal shows…our setup can be pretty intense, and the more room and time we have the better. But SXSW is an exception to that rule. Last year was an incredible experience and quite a test – we played 12 shows in 4 days – and we all felt pretty energized by it. I hope we can do it again next year.

AOT: With all of the harmonies you include in your songs, did many of the members do a lot of vocal work previous to the forming Whales?

JH: I’m the only one of us with formal training in choirs, but we all sang prior to forming the band. Everyone had their own projects here and there, and each of those projects involved some amount of vocal work. It has taken a lot of work to figure out how our voices blend, but I think two-and-a-half years in we’re getting the hang of it.

AOT: You’ve stated that many of Judah’s lyrics stem from dream journaling. Does he read pretty deeply into those or is it just a source of creativity you try not to get too Freudian about?

JH: I think that a lot of what Judah dream-wrote during that time in his life related to childhood experiences and dreams that he actually had, so the Freudian aspect is able to be kept at bay. With that said, I think the album resonates differently for every person who hears it (and hopefully it resonates at all!). Everyone has very intimate, vivid and sometimes disturbing or extraordinary dreams, so I think simply the act of dreaming is what is most relatable about Judah’s lyrics. Hopefully anyone can read deeply into them and garner their own meaning.

AOT: After the upcoming North American tour finished up in May, are you taking time off or are there any plans to record new material?

JH: I think we’re planning on a bit of both. We have a good amount of time between now and when we leave in April, so that’ll be some nice time off combined with some leisurely writing time. After we’re done touring with Foals and The Naked and Famous in May, we definitely have a vision of recording a new album whose songs are not yet written. We’re really eager to get down to creating new music, both in writing and recording it, so the summer should be a fun adventure.