Animal Collective have cancelled their fall 2022 European tour. The band announced the news today on Instagram, citing budgetary and health concerns as reasons for their decision and adding that refunds will be available to those who bought tickets through their original points of purchase. “Friends, we are absolutely gutted to announce today that we are making the decision to cancel our UK/EU dates for this November,” they wrote. “We love playing music for you and truly wish we could be there.
“It has been a wild year for us trying to push through a mountain of touring obstacles related to COVID and the economy,” the post continues. “Three of us got bad cases of Covid. We were forced to cancel shows and lost large amounts of the income that sustains us and our families. The one constant has been that we have had an incredible time playing music in front of our fans at every show. You are all amazing. We chose to push through because we love to do it. But preparing for this tour we were looking at an economic reality that simply does not work and is not sustainable. From inflation, to currency devaluation, to bloated shipping and transportation costs, and much much more, we simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could. We have always been the kind of people to persevere through the difficult times and get on stage unless our health prevented it. We are choosing not to take the risk to our mental and physical health with the economic reality of what that tour would have been.
“We hope you understand and that you know we would not make a choice like this lightly,” the caption concludes. “We truly want nothing more than to make it out there again. Thank you so much to our team, the promoters and venues who worked so hard on this tour for us. We look forward to getting back out to play for all of you and hope you will be there with us when we do.”
AnCo’s 19-show European run was scheduled to start on November 3 in Limerick, Ireland and end on November 27 in Köln, Germany, with stops in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Belgium along the way. They released their 11th studio album, Time Skiffs, in February and discussed the process behind it on the 35th episode of The FADER Interview.