INTERVIEW: Perfect Animal: “[Live Music] is the Most Human Experience There Is”

The band muses on Muscle ahead of their headlining gig at Eddie’s Attic

Perfect Animal ahead of their headlining Eddie's Attic show (Photo by Mikey Smith)

Perfect Animal is, in every sense, a dream team. The four-piece rock group has developed a reputation in the scene for their introspective lyrics, genre-bending instrumentation, and stellar production. Armed with a brand-new release (and several more on the way), the band is fully in their element and are gearing up for an exciting spring. Art Seen ATL met up with Perfect Animal at Argyle Records in Buckhead to discuss their latest album, lessons learned during production, and their love of live music.

Perfect Animal’s current iteration features Eric Peters (vocals/rhythm guitar), Michael Hitchcock (producer/lead guitar), Sam Horwitz (drummer), and Alex Dauer (bass/synth). Peters and Dauer were two of the band’s founding members, and Hitchcock, their sound engineer, was their first call when reconfiguring the lineup last year. Finding a new drummer proved to be more difficult than anticipated, according to Peters: “The drummers we did try out were all good in their own right, but they’re very much like AC/DC, bro rock, four-on-the-floor stuff.” With her effortless adaptability and innovative contributions on the kit, Horwitz notoriously drums for a laundry list of local bands—ASA first met her when she filled in for Kelly Romo’s drummer. After one of her many projects disbanded, Perfect Animal roped her in to complete the crew.

When asked to describe their sound, Hitchcock joked about the band’s widespread influences: “Nirvana meets U2, and also the introduction to the American Idol theme song.” He’s not wrong—Perfect Animal absorbed the energies of a variety of genres and artists, blending them into something entirely unique. Part indie folk, part “emo Americana” (in Dauer’s words), a sprinkle of shoegaze, and some early Dave Matthews (according to Horwitz) make for the band’s multi-faceted approach to modern rock.

Recently, Perfect Animal has been riding the high of their sophomore album, Muscle, released in December 2025. The project’s title originates from the idea of “muscling your way through a bunch of bulls—t,” Peters described, reflecting the project’s journey to completion. Rather than writing each track with a set theme in mind, he shared that the album’s cohesion arose through studio sessions. “I really do feel like themes are implicit and that they manifest after you’ve tracked,” the singer stated. “We kind of shaped it as it happened. We saw the vision and it was either right or wrong for the record.”

Part of this thematic process emerged from Hitchcock’s production philosophy. Muscle was fully recorded and mixed at his own studio, Argyle Records, and the guitarist’s extensive background as a sound engineer proved to be a useful resource. “I like mixing stuff that already sounds great, so I’m trying to be just as inspired while we’re recording and putting mics on amps.” Hitchcock explained. “If it doesn’t just kick ass right now, it’s definitely going to struggle to later.”

Between their first album, Soft Applause, and Muscle, Perfect Animal learned some important lessons about flexibility and going with the creative flow. “With Soft Applause, [...] we had ten songs, and we were like ‘these are the exact ten songs on that album,” Peters said. “We didn’t allow ourselves room to nix songs, and that was the big lesson I carried over from that album.” Fifteen songs were recorded for Muscle, which was soon trimmed to ten tracks—one of the cuts, “Ceremonial Offerings,” was released as an external single. On earlier projects, Dauer developed a love for sampling, which influenced several openings and key choices on the album. Percussion-wise, Horwitz pulled from her other musical endeavors, incorporating a syncopated snare inspired by the Bossa Nova stylings of Pterocat and a learned fluency in “drum language”: “When I would play with Equal Creatures, they taught me a lot about scaffolding the energy of a song and how to communicate ‘drum questions’ to people.”

Visuals are huge for Perfect Animal. Atlanta-based photographer and creator extraordinaire Sam Kapoor was the mastermind behind the Muscle-era imagery. Kapoor drew inspiration from the iSpy activity books of yesteryear, utilizing a similar font and trinket collage style on the vinyl’s inserts. Compared to the internal designs of its packaging, Muscle’s cover is much simpler: a Sharpie-labeled shotgun stock on a white background. The story behind the image, however, is a far more extravagant tale:

Peters: “One of my great, great, great grandfathers owned a general store in Bumf—k, Tennessee. There was this town drunk—this is how my dad tells it—and they had beef. The drunk was a very violent guy, and he was like ‘I’m gonna come tomorrow morning and I’m gonna kill you.’ So my grandfather sat on the porch of this general store with that gun waiting for this dude. And he came up staggering, all drunk with a knife in his hand. He was yelling and hollering and started running towards [the store], so [my grandfather] took the butt of the gun and just cracked him across the skull and killed him in self-defense. So, if you notice, there’s twine on the handle, and it’s because he cracked the butt of the gun across this dude’s skull.”  

This year, Perfect Animal is expanding beyond their usual stomping grounds and venturing to music venues and dive bars outside the Atlanta area. Don’t fret, there are still chances to catch the band at one of their hometown shows: on April 30^th, they’ll be headlining Eddie’s Attic with support from Flat Tired and Kids in the Sand. The concertgoing experience is sacred to the band—they’re big advocates of getting to know artists “the old-fashioned way” through live events instead of screens. Peters dubbed the phenomenon as “the most human experience there is,” a wildly accurate way to capture the beauty of discovering art in your own backyard. “It’s really fun to see a band you’ve never heard of,” Hitchcock smiled. “That’s the best way to discover a band. If anyone needs to listen to the album before they see a band, I’d really challenge you not to. Let the first impression be them on stage and then go compare it to the record and see how it makes you feel comparatively.”

The crew shouted out local artists they’re loving, including but not limited to Hunter Blalock, Shake Awake, and ash tuesday. Like most conversations at ASA, these shoutouts demonstrated just how close-knit the scene can be. “There’s just so much community in it all,” Horwitz smiled. “It’s like this reciprocal thing where you’re playing a show, and you look out into the audience, and then the people in the audience are playing a show, and you’re in the audience. Everybody’s just there for each other.”

As for what’s to come, Perfect Animal is already ahead of the game. During our conversation, the band announced that their next two projects are fully written and in the process of being recorded. Peters shared that the concept for the upcoming releases had a somewhat surprising origin. “I felt like I needed direction on where to go next, and I had this very vivid dream where somebody told me to do two albums simultaneously,” he explained. “[I felt I should] do an acoustic bass album and a more Gothic, post-punk album and release them in lock step.” The task is quite impressive, but Hitchcock said it’s par for the course for Peters. “There are very few people that write as aggressively as you do,” Hitchcock nodded to the lead singer. “And what I mean by that is you are dedicated to the craft, dude. You really do write like you're working out. A writer should look at your pace and think ‘That's how you do it.’”

On all their projects, Perfect Animal uses their final songs as a segue into future releases. “Slip Chain,” the nostalgic second-to-last track on Muscle, has become a fan favorite, but it’s meant to be a “false ending” to the story. Crafted with otherworldly production and some powerhouse vocals, “in-and-out” is the album’s “encore” and gives a taste of their upcoming releases. With their ever-evolving, cinematic sound, it’s tricky for us fans to predict what the masterminds in Perfect Animal are cooking up, but judging by their previous projects, we know these next albums are going to absolutely knock your socks off.

Perfect Animal will play Eddie’s Attic on Thursday, 4/30. Purchase tickets HERE.

Article by Olivia Smith. Photos by Mikey Smith. Please credit @mts2.photo or @art.seen.atl if reposting on social media.