Photo by Marie Renaud
Post Animal. A band which has often been described as either “that genuinely good psychedelic band” or “that band with the big-hair guy from Stranger Things”.
I can be blamed for describing them as the latter. Although he has recently left the group, when I first found out Joe Keery was with them it was hard to get over it. It took time for me to see beyond his luscious locks and recognize this band as genuinely good on its own hairspray-less merits. But in the end I did. I grew to like them. They are, as I say, genuinely good. But saying this, it has occurred to me that despite outgrowing Joe Keery from Stranger Things, Post Animal has never quite managed to outgrow the fact that they’re “just another genuinely good psychedelic group in a myriad of genuinely good psychedelic groups”. Of course, standing out in a genre like psychedelic rock is hard. It’s reserved for the very best, the ones prepared to take hold of the guitar neck, grip it hard, and jump their way out of the box. Tame Impala did it, King Gizzard too, but Post Animal so far has been comfortable in their lane. Or, at least, they were.
If there’s one way to enter a new decade, it’s with a single like “Fitness”. For Post Animal, this is a complete massacre of their own script. The sound is ominous, brooding, almost like the anthem to some kind of fitness cult; like it’s entrance music to a running club in the vein of Eyes Wide Shut. The mood swallows itself into a rock song briefly in the middle section, where the guitars finally let themselves rip with a brief psychedelic trip, but even this is restrained, the song never allows itself to kill its own mood with a diversion into the familiar. This is Post Animal wanting to push themselves. In the same way as the track, the band wants to take steps, to go somewhere rather than stand still and stay rooted in familiarity. They want to be something more than just “genuinely good”.
“How much further to go?” the vocals croon. Well at this point it’s hard to say, but if this single is anything to go by, I’d suggest we all get our running gear on and prepare to find out. Just don’t forget the headphones.