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Tag: indie bands

  • Post Animal’s Album IRON: A Collaborative Masterpiece

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    On July 25th, Post Animal unveiled their anticipated album Iron. This release is significant for many reasons, primarily because it marks the first time in nearly a decade that all original band members have collaborated on an album. Joe Keery rejoined the group for this creative process, deepening both their musical progression and friendship. After Keery attended one of their New York shows about a year ago, the idea to craft new music together emerged. The band wrote and produced Iron collectively during several weeks secluded in the woods of Indiana.

    “This record felt like a revitalization of our friendships and our band,” Hirshland says. “We always work collaboratively, but it’s amazing how reintroducing Joe into the mix brought back that dynamic from 2017.”

    “We all felt it’d be great to do something like that again, to go somewhere and be isolated and work on music together. It was a labor of love.” Keery says.

    We have eagerly anticipated this release, and we are thrilled with the album we’ve received. It’s a stunning testament to the band’s deep connection and shared passion.

    Let’s dive in and discuss what we love about the tracks on Iron!

    Iron album cover
    Photography by Sam Dole, Courtesy of Grandstand Media

    ‘Malcoms Cooking’

    A delightful and whimsical instrumental opens the album, highlighting the band’s versatility and varied instrumentation. This track pays homage to their friend Malcom Brown, whose Indiana home hosted the band and who also served them chef-quality meals during their stay.

    ‘Last Goodbye’

    As the lead single from the album, we were introduced to the new sound of this era. ‘Last Goodbye’ addresses the obstacles each band member confronted over the past decade; a reminder that all things inevitably end. 

    Now I’m racing for what to do
    All roads lead my right back to you
    I know my life’s been changing
    But I’ll be pacing back on the road again

    ‘Maybe You Have To’

    The theme of loss continues as this track starts with voicemails from Toledo’s late grandmother. It deals with grief openly and serves as a heartfelt tribute for anyone who has gone through it. “The song is about coming to terms with death, with the absence of someone you love,” Toledo says. “She was a warrior.”

    I know that life, it doesn’t work like that
    Somebody goes, you can’t bring them right back
    Another life, it doesn’t work like that

    ‘Setting Sun’

    The band tried out this song during their tour with Djo, and it quickly became a fan favorite. The strong rock sound makes it easy to see why. Its energy is just right for shouting along in the mosh pit or up at the barricade. The lyrics also make it a catchy, feel-good rock song.

    Hit the gas, speed it up
    It’s time to make up for the years spent idlin’
    Donе givin’ in
    And tryna be somebody I nevеr knew

    ‘Pie In The Sky’

    The second single from the album captures all the wonder and whimsy fans have come to expect from the band. Friends, their instruments, voices, and shared love for music blend to create a fun and lively track.

    The sun hits me when I’m back in my home
    Day sleeper, sleeping alone
    Black magic, keep me alive
    Just wake me when she’s in the sky

    ‘What’s A Good Life’

    What IS a good life? It’s a question we all think about. The final single from the album explores this idea and suggests that the key is to accept yourself, flaws and all, before time runs out.

    For the first time in my life
    It’s fine that I’m not perfect
    Nobody’s fool
    Nobody’s cool
    It’s who you are

    ‘Main Menu’

    Like something out of a video game, this second instrumental track gives a good split to the album. As the music progresses, random voicemails are played on top of each other, and it mixes into a twinkly-sounding instrumental. 

    ‘Dorien Kregg’

    By far the most unique song on the album. We are introduced to this character of ‘Dorien Kregg’ by surreal lyrics and a psychedelic tune, and it ends with an angry voicemail that Williams actually received. This is the type of music that really reflects the band’s creativity and imagination as a whole, and they always exceed our expectations. 

    No, I don’t recognize any of this
    What’s that sound coming through the abyss?
    Do, do things really change on a dime?
    I feel so sure that that life isn’t mine, oh!

    ‘Common Denominator’

    The album starts to wind down with this track, an acoustic guitar in the forefront and soft vocals from the band. It feels like the wind running through your hair as the sun beams down on your face. The lyrics question if they are the common denominator, and how it feels to navigate that situation.

    Who would you see, if I could be
    A fraction of the one I dream about?
    A million ways I could’ve been
    Infinitely lost in time

    ‘Iron’

    Coming in with the piano keys and hazy-sounding vocals, Iron ends the album with its reflective lyrics about life & friendships, and the power of acceptance. It’s a healing track to end an album that tackles so many vulnerable topics.

    You said, “Iron sharpens iron
    But a blade is still a blade”
    Were we real or just unbridled?
    Guess I thought they were the same

    Photography by CJ Harvey
    Courtesy of Grandstand Media

    Praise For Iron

    Fans and critics alike have greeted this album with a wave of excitement. Iron marks a bold leap forward from their previous work, Love Gibberish (2020), with many calling it their finest release since their breakout debut, When I Think Of You In A Castle (2018). The return of Keery marks an important moment in their career, and fans have been waiting for this for a long time. Iron reveals a more personal side of the band and hints at exciting possibilities ahead.

    Make sure to listen to Iron on all platforms, and catch Post Animal on tour this fall! Let us know over on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram what you like most about the album!

    TO LEARN MORE ABOUT POST ANIMAL: 
    FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | TIKTOK | TWITTER | WEBSITE | YOUTUBE

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    Eva B.

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  • Twenty Years Later, the Postal Service Is Still Rocking

    Twenty Years Later, the Postal Service Is Still Rocking

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    In the early aughts, the swelling electro-pop number “Such Great Heights” was seemingly everywhere: on TV shows like The O.C., Veronica Mars, Grey’s Anatomy, covered by Iron & Wine in the famed Garden State soundtrack, in countless commercials. The song crystallized the legacy of a supergroup that could have been lost in history but has instead grown exponentially in the last two decades.

    It isn’t an exaggeration to say there are few indie side projects that have been as influential as the Postal Service, a band that took cues from the likes of Depeche Mode and Brian Eno and paired songs of loneliness, love, and existential crises with anxious drum machine beats, lush synths, melancholic vocal harmonies. The group entered the zeitgeist right after the indie-rock invasion of the likes of the Strokes and the White Stripes and became the bridge to the popularization of more electro-influenced indie-rock acts that followed like Passion Pit, MGMT, and Crystal Castles. In more recent years, it’s easy to cite the Postal Service as forebears of acts like CHVRCHES and Purity Ring. While the band’s presence may have been somewhat of a fever dream, their one and only album—Give Up—has lived on as an indietronica masterpiece that evolved into a word-of-mouth sensation.

    It’s the origin story of the Postal Service—one with the spirit of creativity and collaboration—that has helped shape the band’s legacy. The band, composed of Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, producer Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis, began in 2001 when Tamborello was looking for collaborators for his electronic project Dntel. Thereafter, they began to take their collaboration further, with Tamborello sending Gibbard instrumentals by snail mail and Gibbard returning tracks with vocals and other instruments. “It was the easiest way to work since I lived in Los Angeles and Ben lived in Seattle,” Tamborello told Vanity Fair over the phone from Los Angeles. “So we would just send CDRs back and forth.”

    From Credit Michael Muller.

    In 2002, they recruited Lewis to add vocals, and she subsequently became a member of the band. The Rilo Kiley bandleader had never seen a photo of Gibbard before she went to pick him up at the Burbank airport and record her vocals. “I asked him to hold a sign that said ‘Gibbard,’ and I had the Rilo Kiley van, this giant 15-passenger van and there was Ben holding a sign that said ‘Ben Gibbard’ in a striped T-shirt. I was like, ‘oh yeah, that’s my friend.’ Hilarious,” Lewis said over the phone from Los Angeles. She spent two days recording vocals at Tamborello’s apartment in Silverlake. “He had a bunch of roommates, and I recorded the vocals in his bedroom with Ben giving me direction,” she recalled. “That was it.”

    By 2003, the trio shared their album, Give Up, via Sub Pop Records, which touted singles like “Such Great Heights,” the postapocalyptic “We Will Become Silhouettes” and the maudlin, glitch-heavy “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” Because Tamborello and Gibbard were collaborating by mail, Lewis considers Give Up a “very futuristic record.” “That is not something that people were really doing at that time,” she said. “It kind of predicted 20 years ahead of its time without knowing it.” The world caught up, and Give Up went platinum in 2012, becoming the second best-selling album in Sub Pop’s history (Nirvana’s 1989 studio debut, Bleach, took the top spot.) “It informed the landscape of popular music in a way, coming from this independent wing and then infiltrating commercials on television,” says Lewis.

    Over the years, the Postal Service has acquired some surprising fans. Gibbard recalls receiving what he believes was an internal memo from Meta where Mark Zuckerberg paid tribute to the band. “It was like Mark Zuckerberg saying Give Up came out 20 years ago. You’ll love that record. Can’t believe it’s been 20 years.’ I was like, ‘I’m sorry. What?’…That was a trip,” Gibbard recalls over the phone from Seattle. When he played with John Cale in 2011, he told Gibbard how much he loved the band. “That made my fucking life,” he says. “I mean, that’s right up there with the most flattering compliments I’ve ever received.”

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    Ilana Kaplan

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