An Interview with Post Animal
Interview by: Sarah Morrison
Photos by: Nathan McLaren-Stewart
It's been nearly two years since we last spoke with the men that form Post Animal; an interview that took place at the Velvet Underground in Toronto, Canada. Now, after an overdue reunion, we once again sit down with the band only this time at Moth Club in London, UK.
Since speaking last, Post Animal have announced and released their debut album "When I Think Of You In A Castle" through Polyvinyl Records; a tremendous creation that has set the bar high for the bands' next release. We got down the basics of how the band decided to shape the album, the theatrical approaches to their iconic music videos, the departure of a band member, and the possibility of a follow-up album.
After I spoke to you last, the band announced the release of your album “When I Think Of You In A Castle,” which was released via Polyvinyl Records. How were you introduced to the label? What made them feel like the right fit?
Jake: We started talking about working with them before we formally met anyone who worked for the label, personally. The community is pretty small so everyone knew each other that we work with on our team.
Dalton: We like White Reaper and White Reaper were on Polyvinyl. Also, the guy who runs the label is from the place where Matt and I grew up in Danville, Illinois. That’s kind of the reason why we felt comfortable going with them, because we kind of trusted them more; we’re smalltown boys. Didn’t Richard have something to do with Polyvinyl?
Has signing with a labelled changed anything you view in regards to the music industry?
Dalton: The smoke disappeared and you see all the bullshit that goes on. That’s something we know going forward, will consider all of that industry stuff. Just how many middle men there are and how many times you have to do something as a favour before you can rely on those industry connections. Some of the negative stuff, but also its very positive and fun.
Jake: I don’t think any of us really knew what the people on your team do until they joined us. We didn’t know what a booking agent really was until we got one; lawyer, record label. It’s been interesting having spent some time working with these people and being able to learn about it all. What is a record label? I don’t think anyone tells you that until you’re actually involved. You learn it as you go.
The album stays true to a type of psychedelia rock music, with a sense of nostalgia to likes of great historical acts. With today’s expansion on the genre, what would you say separates you from the other acts out there today?
Wes: There are other bands that do this, we’re definitely not the only ones but we’re not afraid to step into a really poppy zone and then head into the opposite end of the spectrum and get heavy and fuzzed out. We’re trying to dip our feet into a lot of different sounds. It’s definitely something we will continue to do when writing music; to more and more extremes to where it breaks away from being just psychedelic rock.
Javi: Beyond the spectrum of being poppy or on the other side, heavy. We’re now embracing stuff that sounds a bit emo-y, or uh, just genres that I didn’t really expect us to do.
Jake: A lot of people at our recent shows have been calling us a prog band which we’ve sort of become. We’ve found joy in embracing that term and I think that’s what would set us apart or that’s a good capitalisation of what might set us apart from other psych rock bands. We blur a line between psychedelic rock and progressive music. That’s a little hole we’re trying to carve out for ourselves.
Did you knowingly incorporate a fantasy/video game style that was portrayed on the record or was this something that was this element unplanned and slowly came out as you started to record the album?
Jake: A little bit of everything you’ve just said. It wasn’t a perfect concept album, it was conceptualised in some respects, in advance. Then it was riffed upon and changed a lot in the moment while recording and making the album artwork. It was a back and forth between things that we had planned in advance for the whole look, sound, and feel of the record and then stuff that happened in the moment. I think that’s why our record sounds like of a time, or of a group of people together in one time and place creating music rather than some petty concept album. But we definitely had undercurrents and concepts running through that we were thinking about while doing that.
What was the recording process like for this record in comparison to older tracks. Did the label support have any major push on the way it all got produced?
Dalton: We had that done our end before we signed to the label. They gave us options for people to master it but we chose someone on our own. It was one of our qualifications for signing, that they weren’t going to be able to tell us how it should sound. We wanted to keep the lo-fi-ness of it. We wanted to make sure they wouldn't go off and tell us to work with another producer or something like that. We’re just so used to doing it ourselves.
Jake: Just to give a shout out to Polyvinyl, I don’t think they ever do that with any of their bands. That’s part of the whole ethos of the label; they don’t tell people how to record or anything. It’s just their thing!
I also read that the opening song “Everything All At Once,” wasn’t intended to be an instrumental track. What changed for you all, and did this change form a path for the way the album would be shaped?
Dalton: Ya, there were lyrics, I think we just all kind of forgot about them. When you get somewhere, you can think up all these ideas and plan out the entire thing, but when you get to the place where you will record and you start doing it, you realize that all that goes out the window and you just need to work with what you have. Once we recorded the instrumental, we just thought that this didn’t need vocals anymore. We would never put vocals on a song just because there were no vocals on the track. I think we just got lost in time, lost in the song.
Joe Kerry decided to depart from the band before the album was released. Did he record on the album?
Dalton: Yes, he was on everything! He was out before it came out. I believe it was 2017 when he left.
Jake: He was no longer touring with us when it was released.
Has anything within the dynamic of the band shifted since his departure?
Jake: Yes it was definitely really different, not for better or for worse, it was just a change. My experience with the live show changed a lot because I was suddenly playing a lot of his parts. I play keyboard and guitar so I was hopping in and doubling things that he would of doubled before. I’m sure all of us have a good amount of responsibilities that we picked up or changes that we made to make it a whole again and not make it feel like it was missing someone. It was very different; all good, all the same!
Wes, you almost moved out to Los Angeles around this time?
Wes: Yes, I did! I went to spend some time out there and was trying to make a personal move. I was out in L.A. while we weren’t touring for awhile; staying with some friends but I never fully landed out there for various reasons. The main one being easy access to Chicago and practice.
Your music video for Ralphie is truly a special one as all members were able to participate and be included. What did this video mean to you all?
Dalton: We really wanted to involve Joe.
Jake: Ya, it's the one where he sings the lead vocals on the verses and it’s a song where the writing was strongly driven by Joe if not most of that song is constructed by him. It felt like it wouldn’t have been right had he not be in the promotion for it or the exposition on it. We made a point, we planned pretty far in advance to try and make sure all of us could tip our cap in the video. It was fun!
There seems to be a consistent pattern with your music videos as Wes seems to always be on the hunt.
Wes: I think that I’m most gifted and also the most likely to get chased.
Post Animal: (laughs)
Dalton: Gelatin Mode just went really well. The theme of Gelatin Mode, Jake and I being paired up and Matt chasing Wes.
Wes: Those two just look good together, you know? They look like a duo. Matt and I look like a buddy cop comedies. Jav is just the villain. Ralphie, I don’t even know with that video.
Javi: There’s not a whole lot of intention. I think we have a good general chase scene aesthetic going on, that we had with the Gelatin Mode video as well. We were just trying to do that but in the desert. We didn’t have much narrative going into it. We were planning it as it was going.
Jake: We had a whole plan but none of it made it into the video. Like none of the plan. We landed in the city where we were shooting it and we were like, “Let’s come up with an entirely new idea!”
Dalton: Gelatin Mode, it was so cold filming in the winter time in Minnesota. And in Ralphie we were in 106 degrees so it was really whatever type of footage we can get that makes some type of sense before the sun sets. We like action in our videos, and cool outfits. A lot of people think we look silly but we think we look sick as fuck.
Matt: A cross between the hypeness of brockhampton and the importance of the 1970s; we land somewhere between those two. Attempt and fail, we fail at landing between those two.