All photos courtesy of Post Animal.
When Joe Keery started Post Animal with a bunch of his friends, he became a bona fide celebrity. But it wasn’t because of his psych-rock band. Even as bands with a similar sonic palette—Tame Impala, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard—were getting bigger by the day, it was Stranger Things that launched Keery into the stratosphere. But even as their frontman went Hollywood, the Chicago outfit kept trucking ahead. Iron, their latest album released this past summer, reunites the original quintet for another record of jangly, kaleidoscopic indie-rock tunes. From the winsome vocal harmonies on “Pie in the Sky” to the analog synth riff on “What’s a Good Life,” Iron presents Post Animal at their most—ahem—ironclad.
Keery, meanwhile, has maintained his own solo project under the mononym Djo. His profile as a musician has grown exponentially since its inception, especially since his third album, The Crux, which dropped on April 4th. This month, he’ll embark on another sold-out string of U.S. dates playing large theaters with Post Animal, who are billed to open the tour. Ahead of this new leg of shows, I caught up with Keery and Post Animal’s Jake Hirshland over Zoom to discuss the cities they’re excited to play, the art of sequencing setlists, how it feels to have the gang back together, and their penchants for collecting old guitars and funny hats while they’re on the road.
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JOE KEERY: How are you doing?
GRANT SHARPLES: So you guys have a tour coming up pretty soon. Are you feeling pretty good about it?
KEERY: Yeah, excited to get back into it. I feel like it’s always kind of funny when you take a break. You’re always a little worried. I don’t know about you, but I’m like, “Do we still got it?”
JAKE HIRSHLAND: Yeah. It’s like, the momentum is prized. But at the end of the tour you are—
KEERY: So primed.
HIRSHLAND: You’re primed, you’re greased up, and that’s one of the best feelings ever. So when you take a little break, you’ve got to ease back into it. But honestly, those tours that we were just on were so fun. I think everyone is looking forward to one more.
SHARPLES: How long have you guys been off now?
KEERY: Since Lollapalooza, I guess? It’ll be about a month or something.
SHARPLES: Are you guys incorporating new songs into the setlist, or sticking with what you’ve been doing so far?
KEERY: We’re both trying to add some stuff, right?
HIRSHLAND: Yeah. Post Animal is adding some stuff. I think you are too, right?
KEERY: Yeah. We’re going to do a couple new ones. We haven’t gotten into the room to rehearse yet, though, so that’s where the rubber meets the road.
SHARPLES: Yeah. How far out do you guys usually rehearse before you go out on the road?
KEERY: Pretty close. I kind of wish we had a little bit more time, to be honest.
SHARPLES: What’s the process when you’re reconfiguring a song from the studio to a live setting? What things are you thinking about as you’re doing that?
HIRSHLAND: It really depends on the song, but a lot of times when you’re in the studio, you’re not writing, you’re not giving yourself limitations, you’re not thinking about the live performance and letting that stop you from adding things. So a lot of it is like, “How do we make all these parts happen with the hands that we have available?” And sometimes that’s a matter of getting creative, and sometimes that’s a matter of adapting things, I guess. And sometimes it’s just about practicing a tone and trying to push yourself to do everything. Sometimes it’s kind of tricky, but I think that’s a really fun process.
KEERY: Yeah, I feel a similar way. I mean, it’s nice to release yourself from feeling like you have to do it the exact way. So thinking [of] it as an adaptation is a cool way to think about it. It has to be exactly right, but I feel like if it’s a little bit different, it’s almost better because then people know it’s really happening, which is the case for both of our bands. We’re pretty keen on not really relying on tracks.
HIRSHLAND: Yeah. What parts can be different? What parts do you have to keep exactly the same? What’s the goal for each song? That choice is different from song to song, basically.
SHARPLES: Speaking of the songs, what are some of the ones that you’re either excited to incorporate into the setlist or ones you’re excited to be playing again?
KEERY: I’m really excited to work this song on the deluxe called “Awake.” That’s just a fun, different sort of format of a song than we have, and we’re going to try to maybe work up “Listen,” which is like a B-side from Decide, which would be cool. We’ll see if we can figure that out. The goal for us is, there are certain parts of the set that feel like a nice fun moment or they feel like they stand out or stand alone, so we want to try to make as many of those as possible, I guess.
HIRSHLAND: Definitely, dude. I’m excited for you guys to do “Awake.”
KEERY: I hope we can figure it out. It’ll be interesting to see because on the recording, it’s actually just a sample that we ended up chopping. We took the first note of every section and repeated it, so it has kind of a monotonous thing. We’re also maybe incorporating, like, an MPC trigger thing for me, which is cool.
SHARPLES: On the keyboard?
KEERY: No, we’re going to have a little pad, or it’ll be on top of the Nord. For other songs too, yeah. We’ll see if it works.
SHARPLES: Nice. What about for Post Animal?
HIRSHLAND: We have this song called “What’s a Good Life?” There’s that one, and then there’s this song, “Dorien Kregg,” and they’re both on our new album.
SHARPLES: You’re a synth wizard.
HIRSHLAND: I’m not, but I’m trying to be. We got some real synth wizards in our midst.
KEERY: He’s underselling us all.
HIRSHLAND: I feel like I’m doing two-a-days on the keyboard, like NFL practice. I’m trying to figure out how to do it, but it’s basically a fun challenge.
SHARPLES: Well, as far as setlists go, how do you go about constructing them? When you’re sequencing something, what do you have in mind when you’re putting them together?
KEERY: Well, there’s always guide points along the way where you’re like, “Okay, we know we’re going to do this.” And then you kind of break in and flesh things out from there. My goal for the setlist is to maybe be a little less different every night. We were doing full overhauls. There were big changes. No one probably noticed it except for us in the band. But it allows everybody in the band and in the company to get into a groove. I don’t know if you feel this way, but you’re trying to curate the vibe.
HIRSHLAND: It’s really hard to come up with a methodology that you can actually stick to. Everyone has a different opinion, and then a show will happen and it will change everyone’s opinion. No one is right. Should you come out really hot, or should you end with a song that people know?
KEERY: That’s why it’s fun. Just switch it up all the time. You can always try different things, especially if you have light ADD and you’re like, “I can’t do the same thing twice.”
HIRSHLAND: But you do feel it when it’s maybe not quite right. We’ve done a lot of that, where we’ve been talking about the sets after the shows, when there’s too much of a valley. There is a way to feel it out. It’s hard to know how to correct things, but sometimes when you bring up something, everyone has already noticed it. Everyone is on the same page about at least what just happened.
SHARPLES: What are some moments where you feel like that happened, if you’re willing to share?
KEERY: I feel like it’s mid-set lulls. Our set was always designed to be high-energy, and then we got into a little bit of a groove. But we have a lot of mid-tempo songs, and we don’t have a lot of groovy songs in the set right now. That’s the nature of the album that we just released. So it feels like if you take too long, people start to chill out a little bit. What were some other ones in that middle zone? It was like everything before “Gap Tooth Smile.”
HIRSHLAND: Like “Chateau.”
KEERY: Yeah. It was like “Fly, Figure You Out,” “Chateau,” “Roddy,” these slower songs, even though they’re songs that people know and probably know better than most of the catalog. So you feel obliged to play them even though sometimes you’re like, “Is this the best flow?” I guess that’s the restriction of only having so much music out.
SHARPLES: I wanted to ask about cities too. Are there any cities you’re playing for the first time or any that you’re really stoked to be playing again?
HIRSHLAND: You’re probably playing a couple for the first time.
KEERY: A lot—Atlanta, Nashville, Asheville, Dallas. L.A., we’ve played, but I’m excited for that. We played in Oakland, but the venues are definitely a step-up in size. We had such a fun run this spring, and we’re all really looking forward to getting out and doing what we were doing, but on a bit of a bigger scale.
HIRSHLAND: Yeah. Oh my god. And we’re going to play some outdoor, amphitheater kind of places, and that’s a totally different experience. Even if you’ve played in the city before, you haven’t done a spot like that. It’s going to be really good.
KEERY: As a group, we do a pretty good job also of exploring all the cities that we’re in. We have a pretty active crew. There’s a group going to a museum. There’s a group taking a run. There’s a group that’s chilling at the venue doing laundry. Everyone is exploring. That’s a real benefit of this.
HIRSHLAND: Definitely.
KEERY: Going to guitar shops and stuff. There’s going to be some good ones on this tour. Nashville and Asheville, some cool southern cities. Texas has amazing guitars. That’s where people find them under their beds, guys who have had their guitars in their closet for like, 60 years.
SHARPLES: You hoping to pick up some new guitars on this trip?
KEERY: Unfortunately, my addiction continues. I’m hoping to.
SHARPLES: [Laughs] Oh, you got one right there.
KEERY: I’m hoping to keep the addiction alive.
HIRSHLAND: Got a few. Bits and bobs. DooDads.
KEERY: Are you hoping to get anything?
HIRSHLAND: I don’t know. We’ll see. It was tempting in Europe, but it’s hard to get the things back.
SHARPLES: It’s all different, I’m sure. A lot more cumbersome.
HIRSHLAND: Definitely.
KEERY: You have to have the right connections at the border. That’s what I figured out.
HIRSHLAND: I definitely had a heavy suitcase of clothing.
KEERY: Oh, we’ve certainly got a lot of clothes. You’re hitting the coolest thrift stores in every single city. It’s hard not to be like, “Hey, this shirt is really cool,” and then all of a sudden you have 10 shirts that you’ve got to fly home with, sometimes more.
HIRSHLAND: And some funny hats.
KEERY: I certainly got a lot of funny hats on this trip.
SHARPLES: [Laughs] So, guitars and funny hats?
KEERY: We’re simple people, really.
SHARPLES: Joe, I know this is your first time being back with Post Animal since 2017-ish, so how does it feel to have the gang back together?
KEERY: Oh, man. It’s amazing. It’s kind of hard to remember, actually, what was the impetus for the idea other than just being like, “Oh, we should do that.” It’s funny that we hadn’t done it before, but it happened in the perfect way. We have this great piece of art to show for this time that we spent together, which is such a fun little memento to have. We’ve all been on these different journeys separately as artists and people, and to all come back together and to have different levels of expertise that we all bring to the table, it was super natural. It was a true labor of love. It feels kind of selfish in a way because we’re just also hanging out and having a fun time doing this stuff. When we first met, we all really bonded over being involved in this creative project together, so it was an extension of that.
SHARPLES: Do you feel like you’ve each grown as live performers since you first started out?
HIRSHLAND: Definitely, yeah. It’s a totally different ball game for everyone, which is fun.
KEERY: I mean, when we first started out—
HIRSHLAND: We were not very good. [Laughs]
KEERY: I was playing drums pretty poorly, honestly.
HIRSHLAND: Now people are getting fairly good at doing it.
KEERY: Yeah, I think so. Everyone has had enough time. It’s hard, though.
HIRSHLAND: It’s cool to have this big show to play with and have the ability to cross-pollinate the two bands. There’s a lot of time for everyone to experiment with things. From start to finish, you could even see a difference in how everyone was performing. It was almost like a time warp.
KEERY: Yeah, I felt that way.
HIRSHLAND: It felt really cool to watch. Night after night, it would be a completely different level of performance, at least from where I was watching.
SHARPLES: What are you each most looking forward to on this next leg?
KEERY: I’m really looking forward to spending time with our gang. I mean, I’m really excited for the shows, not to make that sound secondary. From start to finish, it really does feel like a big show and a big extension of our friend group. I’m excited to be back in that world again. It’s like everybody has gone and retreated to their homes and spent time with their loved ones and stuff, so it’ll be really great to get everyone back together.
HIRSHLAND: The alchemy of the two groups of people—the connections run so deep, and it’s a really fun group to be with for an extended period of time. It’s always nice to tour with people, but it’s rare that you have that kind of a thing going on with every single person. I got my own relationship with each of these people, and it feels super good to just be hanging.
