Interview: Post Animal on DIY music, touring, and their upcoming album.
Having spent the majority of this year on the road touring with the likes of Wavves, Twin Peaks, and playing the SXSW circuit, Post Animal have not only ticked off their "Summer Tour 2017" bucket-list, but also garnered the attention of many as one of the most exciting up-and-coming D.I.Y. acts out of Chicago.
The band proclaim themselves to be “best friends before teammates”, and their on-stage performances demonstrate exactly that - and if their latest single ‘Special Moment’ is anything to go by, their album will be unlike anything you’ve heard before.
With their new album set for release later this year, we recently caught up with two members of Post Animal in New York after their sold-out show at Baby’s All Right to talk about the upcoming album, touring, and more…
...there’s nothing like whopping ass on-stage.
COUP DE MAIN: Your show was crazy! And you've been pretty hectic touring for the last little while - SXSW and opening for Wavves. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt since being on the road?
WES TOLEDO: Especially now, now that we’ve been in it for a month or so, it’s like, pace yourself. During the day if you need to get away for a second, get to your own space, get some alone time, take a nap or something, you don’t always have to be ‘going’ all the time. Also, vitamins.
MATT WILLIAMS: Vitamins. Vitamins are big. Drinking water and trying to keep the van clean. It’s those little things that make it more comfortable.
CDM: Do you prefer recording? Or touring?
MATT: Two different beasts. I think, recording, at least for the record that’s coming up, I think recording was magical. It sounds so cheesy, but the way that it happened, I don’t think it could have happened any other way.
HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OUR TOUR…
CDM: You went to a ranch, right?
WES: We went to a lake house in Michigan.
MATT: A really good friend, her family has a lake house in Southern Michigan. We had some very surreal, spooky experiences, and it’s actually on the record. I won’t say anymore, but there’s some weird ghost stuff that happens. It actually affected the recordings. Touring is-- it’s so great to travel and play shows in towns that are not your hometown. Tonight was a really fun show, it was a rowdy crowd. Not every show is going to be like that, but it’s cool in a way that it can be different challenges - different people from different towns, and everyone has their own little thing going on in their town. To me, I love playing live. It’s cool to look back at Wes, even though he’s feeling bad tonight, and he was just grimacing in pleasure and happiness. That type of thing. The recording thing was so sick.
WES: Recording is just a very special time. Especially this last time with the new record that’s going to come out at some point this year, we basically locked ourselves away for a week at a lake house, and it was definitely the moment that we really found our identity as a band. That was super special. We don’t have a lot of past experiences of recording to base a lot of this off of, but that experience was the best week of last year for me. That was a total blast. But at the same time, there’s nothing like whopping ass on stage.
MATT: We had a break this week after we finished off our thing with Wavves and Twin Peaks. We were in Chicago for like eight days, and I was kind of twiddling my thumbs, like, ‘Dude, I want to be on tour.’ Our good friend told me one time, ‘Dude, touring can suck. Touring can sometimes suck. But when you go home, you’re going to want to go touring again.’ You’re going to have a good time, but you can’t wait to get on the road again.
MY FAVOURITE THING ABOUT MATT IS…
MY FAVOURITE THING ABOUT WES IS…
CDM: You're very open about being a D.I.Y. band, and it's quite interesting - do you find the Internet and social media is actually an approach that works (vs. playing shows, and more traditional ways of building a fanbase)?
WES: The thing with social media is that, definitely whether you like it or not, it’s the greatest tool when it comes to marketing something. Especially nowadays, your fans, that’s how they-- Instagram is probably how most of the people who listen to us even know what’s going on with what we’re doing, and obviously Facebook too.
MATT: Ty Segall doesn’t have any social media presence, but I’m a very big fan of him. He’s like 30-years-old now, and he started ten years ago, or eight years ago, and it didn’t matter. But I think now, social media matters a lot. We got a bunch of funny guys, and we like to be weird. It definitely is fun, but also serves a purpose.
CDM: How have you been managing the business-side of the band, considering you started just as friends playing music together? Now you're playing tours around the country.
WES: Yeah. Honestly, Rian, our manager, she’s totally hooked us up on a whole other level in terms of booking shows, publicity, and playing good shows - we haven’t played a bad show in a while.
MATT: That’s kind of how you come up locally in Chicago. You play thirty bad shows for one good show, and I don’t know how we came upon each other.
WES: It was random chance. We were playing a bunch of shows coming up in Chicago, kind of doing it all ourselves, and then she hit us up and was like, ‘Hey I kind of want to take over some managerial duties.’ Ever since that happened we’ve taken the band to a national level - which is what the goal is, to reach as many people as possible.
CDM: What's the plan with your album? When are you hoping to release it?
MATT: We’re working on it.
WES: It would be a damn shame if it doesn’t come out this year. We finally finished it, probably two weeks ago.
MATT: Very recently.
WES: Now we’re in the beginning process of sorting it. It’s a very weird game, and we are novices when it comes to it. We assume that it’s going to come out at some point later this year. Probably after the Summer.
HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OUR UPCOMING ALBUM…
CDM: Is there a song on the album that you guys are particularly excited to play live? Have you been playing the album material live yet?
WES: Definitely. The song that we closed with tonight, the encore song, that’s one of my favourite songs to play live, and that’s going to be right in the middle of the tracklisting, it’s a centrepiece rocker.
MATT: Our set is unbeknownst to many people because we’re playing to faces that we’ve never seen at the moment, but we’re playing a bunch of new songs, and we don’t tell anyone what we’re playing.
CDM: It’s a good way to test it out.
MATT: Yeah, I love it when a band is playing new tracks all the time. What we’ve been opening with is a new song, it’s very heavy at the end. I love playing that. I’ve really enjoyed our set, it’s really fun.
CDM: If rule #1 of Post Animal is having lush hair and rule #2 is non-stop jamming, what other rules are there to be a part of your gang?
MATT: You gotta be chill, you gotta be able to kick it. If you are into NBA 2K--
WES: Yeah, if you can play NBA 2K, especially NBA 2K15 for Xbox 360. Kobe is still in the game. If you can play, you’re a part of the family.
MATT: That’s it.
WES: It’s pretty easy.
CDM: Your van is called Shannon - have you named other parts of your band, e.g. guitars, etc?
MATT & WES: Dalton has a car called Susan.
MATT: I only know because I grew up with him. We have the same car, mine was a year older, mine was a 1994 Toyota Corolla, his is 1995 - it was like an X or something because it has power windows, and mine doesn’t. It’s called Susan, it’s about 22-years-old.
WES: That’s about it though.
MATT: Yeah, no guitar names, just Shannon.
Post Animal’s single ‘Special Moment’ is out now - click here to purchase.
Watch the ‘Special Moment’ music video below…
