{"title":"Javier Reyes","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"post-animal-when-i-think-of-you-in-a-castle","title":"Post Animal - When I Think Of You In A Castle","description":"\u003cp\u003eChicago-based \u003cstrong\u003ePost Animal\u003c\/strong\u003e are a band of brothers. Though they formed in 2014 and just began touring in 2017, their affinity for slick riffs, pop hooks, and psychedelic tendencies join them in a bond much tighter than their years suggest. Initially formed when childhood friends, bassist Dalton Allison and guitarist Matt Williams, met keyboardist and guitarist Jake Hirshland, the band’s sound began to take shape when the three enlisted some more pals from both the Chicago music scene and through their time working at local burger joints. Rounding out the band’s lineup, Post Animal is completed by drummer Wesley Toledo and guitarists Javi Reyes and Joe Keery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLike most band’s in Chicago’s inclusive music community, Post Animal got their start playing DIY basements and small rock clubs. With their wavy and warped first project 2015’s \u003cem\u003ePost Animal Perform The Most Curious Water Activities\u003c\/em\u003e EP and then 2016’s memorable singles collection \u003cem\u003eThe Garden Series\u003c\/em\u003e, the band showcased mesmerizing and infectious pop melodies. Between their impressive early releases and their wild live shows which feature the band members sharing lead vocal duties, Post Animal have unquestionably solidified themselves as one of Chicago’s most exciting up-and-coming acts. Having taken that intensity across the country, touring with bands like Twin Peaks, Wavves, White Reaper, and more, Post Animal have found they are happiest when playing to a room full of fellow music-lovers. As a result, they are road tested and stronger than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Chicagoans’ debut full-length \u003cem\u003eWhen I Think Of You In A Castle\u003c\/em\u003e, is the product of six friends creating music they love, even if the circumstances weren’t always in their favor. “Before this album, we weren't sure what the future of the band was going to look like. I was considering moving to Los Angeles and Joe [Keery] was off filming Stranger Things. We didn't know where we were all going but we knew we wanted to make an album with all of us in the same room,” explains Toledo. Being the first time all Post Animal members recorded together, the album’s collaborative spirit is more-than-evident throughout its 10 carefully curated tracks. Even Keery, who’s no longer an active touring member of the band due to his skyrocketing acting career, was integral to the album’s inception.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 2016, the band retreated to a lake house in Watervliet, Michigan to record \u003cem\u003eWhen I Think Of You In A Castle\u003c\/em\u003e. For a week and a half, they tracked the LP—all while realizing they weren’t really alone in the house. According to the band, a ghost dwelled there that would jolt them awake from naps and even ended up with a guest appearance on the album. Toledo explains, “There’s a moment on ‘Heart Made of Metal’ where I hit the cymbals and, for some reason, it was recorded in reverse. We think that's the ghost.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, not all of the magic on \u003cem\u003eWhen I Think Of You In A Castle\u003c\/em\u003e can be pinned on the supernatural. Following the lake house trip, the band finished the album at their house in Chicago with Allison perfecting the mix over the next year; even while on their 48-city summer tour in their beloved van (RIP Shannon). Take the first single “Ralphie,” which finds Keery and Allison gleefully trading lead vocals while sounding like what would happen if Jeff Lynne fronted Thin Lizzy. Though Post Animal’s live shows have long proven that swirling riffs are the band’s bread-and-butter, it’s earworms like “Ralphie” that show how easily they can churn out an infectious pop melody.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Ralphie” isn’t the only song that finds the band sharing lead vocal duties. In fact, each band member contributes vocals like Hirshland’s mesmerizing turn on “Castle” or Williams’ punchy performance on “Heart Made of Metal.” Other songs, like the dynamic “Gelatin Mode,” shift from a lighthearted experience in dueling lead guitars to a face-melting dose of sludge with ease. It’s such a transportive track that when Keery menacingly intones, “Below, traveling slow out on your own \/ Your mind gelatin mode time to explode” it’s a welcome invitation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElsewhere, a longtime live staple “Tire Eyes” finds new life on the LP. It’s a swaggering ode to a timeless classic rock song with Allison’s falsetto beckoning, “So forget about your day and let this record float you away \/ As your mind is winding, finding cause to be easy.” The finished album, which was mastered by Jake’s brother, Jared Hirshland, is a truly collaborative continuation on the band’s kaleidoscopic and sprawling early beginnings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut most importantly, \u003cem\u003eWhen I Think Of You In A Castle\u003c\/em\u003e is a testament to not only the brotherly connection that these friends share, but also to the power of collaboration between like-minded musicians who just get one another. “Before we recorded it, it was an uncertain time for us as a band, but we all just had a magical time at this lake house in the middle of summer,” explains Toledo. Almost impossible to describe, the Post Animal bond is best observed while foolin’ at the merch table after a sweaty show. They look forward to seeing you there and, naturally, becoming your new best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e—Josh Terry\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Polyvinyl Records","offers":[{"title":"Vinyl (Half Cream\/Half Maroon)","offer_id":50775365550387,"sku":"PRC-351LP-CM","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50818993619251,"sku":"PRC-351CD","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":50818993684787,"sku":"PRC-351DIGITAL","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Vinyl (180-Gram Magenta) – SOLD OUT","offer_id":52707528278323,"sku":"PRC-351LP-MAGENTA","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0881\/7655\/8387\/files\/8698b4b64c6aa563ef46196164298e7078009204_3fe0d095152a8defbf6fab45f780a171bd710d70_photo_jpg.jpg?v=1763418176"},{"product_id":"post-animal-forward-motion-godyssey","title":"Post Animal - Forward Motion Godyssey","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe sophomore full-length from \u003cstrong\u003ePost Animal\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey\u003c\/em\u003e unfolds with a frenetic momentum, mercurial and unhinged and gloriously volatile. In a bold leap forward both artistically and sonically, the Chicago-based alt-prog band sets their existential questioning to a wildly kinetic sound, mining inspiration from genres as divergent as electronic and psych-rock and—at one particularly sublime point—achieving both stoner-metal brutishness and dreamy R\u0026amp;B elegance in the very same instant. At turns rhapsodic and unsettling, meditative and chaotic, the result is anything but subtle: a body of work that beckons deep involvement from the listener, a richly layered experience primed to leave its audience indelibly transported.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith its maximalist arrangements and larger-than-life scale, \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey\u003c\/em\u003e came to life in a fittingly majestic location: a mountain-adjacent home in Big Sky, Montana, lent to the band by a friend of Reyes. Holing up in the house for eight days—after spending 36 hours stranded in Fargo due to a devastating snowstorm—Post Animal took full advantage of the splendor of their environment. “We recorded one of the songs around sunset, and set up everything so we could look out over the mountains as this crazy pink sun-glow fell over them,” Hirshland recalls. “The whole place was just a really inspiring space to play around in.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout the recording of \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey,\u003c\/em\u003e Allison joined forces with longtime Post Animal collaborator Adam Thein to handle production duties, shaping a sonic landscape that’s unpredictable but never wayward. “Making this record, we wanted to go extreme in a lot of different directions—we wanted to be as poppy as we’ve ever been, as over-the-top as we’ve ever been, as grandiose and heavy and dramatic as we’ve ever been,” Toledo notes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo that end, \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey\u003c\/em\u003e encompasses such moods as the dance-ready radiance of “Safe or Not,” a song about “feeling like you can’t be yourself” according to Reyes. There’s also the disquieting intensity of “Fitness,” a sprawling exploration of what Hirshland refers to as “persistence in the face of loss.” The groove-driven “How Do You Feel” channels both confused longing and irrepressible hope in its soulful overtones, while the synth-heavy “Schedule” embodies an undeniable pop appeal. And on “Sifting,” \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey\u003c\/em\u003e closes out on a moment of otherworldly beauty that the band traces back to the song’s conceptualization. “We really wanted ‘Sifting’ to sound like you’re floating through space on an asteroid,” says Williams. “It’s meant to capture that experience of feeling so small compared to the massiveness of something else, and how that can be kind of haunting but incredibly calming at the same time.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite its endless shapeshifting, \u003cem\u003eForward Motion Godyssey\u003c\/em\u003e bears a cohesive grace, a factor undoubtedly tied to Post Animal’s ever-growing connection as creative partners. With their origins lying in a near-lifelong friendship between Allison and Williams, the band formed in 2015 and got their start as a six-piece also featuring guitarist Joe Keery, then released their debut album\u003cem\u003e When I Think of You in a Castle\u003c\/em\u003e in 2018. 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Quarantine lockdowns and hovering dread shifted the fabric of time in a way that’s ongoing, but was at its most vivid in those early days when a new reality was sinking in. Before people eventually adapted and started using the newly mandatory downtime to learn new languages and bake bread, hours lurched by as the world sat restlessly indoors. All the shows were slowly cancelled one by one, the tours and recording sessions were scrapped, hangs and practices just stopped happening. Everything was on hold indefinitely, time lost meaning, every day felt unreal.\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring the first days of lockdown, Rainer Maria’s Kaia Fischer came up with the concept of \u003cem\u003eExquisite Corpse\u003c\/em\u003e by meditating on their perspective of the newly unfolding weirdness they and so many of their creative friends were going through. Obviously a deadly pandemic was wrought with negatives, and those in particular to independent music scenes were especially devastating. But could there be another side to what felt so all-consumingly terrible? “We know what the pandemic \u003cem\u003eisn’t \u003c\/em\u003egood for,” Fischer said, “but let’s find out what it\u003cem\u003e is\u003c\/em\u003e good for.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSearching for silver linings in the earliest days of lockdown wasn’t easy, but one idea led to another. It began with the realization that every Polyvinyl artist now had a completely clear schedule at the same time. They were also mostly sitting around waiting for the storm to pass, in different states of boredom, anxiety, worry and malaise. Logistically speaking, there might not be another time when pretty much everyone was available for a collaborative project and needed something to occupy their frazzled minds. A round of emails went out explaining the project and inviting members of the Polyvinyl roster to participate. Eleven teams of four or five musicians were assembled more or less at random, bringing together artists that had in many cases never met, much less worked on music together. Remotely, each team worked from scratch to create an original song, a reworked sonic adaptation of the game where each player adds to a collaborative drawing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe scope alone is exciting, with these 11 songs combining the talents of 47 musicians from all corners of the world and all ends of the Polyvinyl family tree. Even the artwork was assembled through remote collaboration, with visual artists from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle collaborating on the design in true Exquisite Corpse fashion. Musically, the results are every bit as exciting and unpredictable as the concept envisioned. New creative chemistries between the different artists and a complete absence of expectations or precedent sounds made for fearless choices in production, genre experimentation and stylistic curveballs. Artists known for sparkling pop worked with more ragged rockers or folks from acoustic-leaning emo bands, and the end results almost always defied the expected sum of their parts. Even though \u003cem\u003eExquisite Corpse\u003c\/em\u003e is timestamped with traces of the overwhelming uncertainty that colored the pandemic’s onset, the music is by-and-large joyful, daring, and fun. More than reflecting the hanging gloom of the non-stop news cycle and spiking graphs, artists tapped into expressions of hope and exploration. This moment of universal upheaval cast a shadow on the entire world, but also allowed for a meeting of minds that was truly unprecedented.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost indie labels share some degree of familial connection, but Polyvinyl is built on that feeling of family. The label was born in the late ‘90s out of the closely knit regional diy scenes of the Midwest, and every aspect of growth since has been informed by the earnest connectivity of those early days. Polyvinyl bands go on tour together, collaborate regularly and exist within a framework facilitated by the label that values friendship and the sharing of ideas above all else. 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The product of a few straight weeks together, \u003cem\u003eIRON\u003c\/em\u003e not only finds them reunited with Keery but is the embodiment of 30 days of camaraderie and unbound musical exploration, their renewed connection ironclad.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter 2022’s sublime \u003cem\u003eLove Gibberish\u003c\/em\u003e, Post Animal found themselves sunk deeper into their work than ever before. That record was their first released independently, with all the extra effort that entails. They also toured extensively, both on their own and with UK psych band Temples. By the time things started settling down, Post Animal was scattered to the wind. Guitarist Javi Reyes and drummer Wesley Toledo dropped back home to Chicago, while guitarist Matt Williams moved to Los Angeles, bassist Dalton Allison decamped for Ithaca, and multi-instrumentalist Jake Hirshland relocated to Brooklyn. “There was some burnout happening,” Allison says. “We were ruthlessly fighting and grinding.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut then Keery showed up at a New York tour stop, and the idea was hatched that they cut another record—all six band members together again, for the first time since 2017. “When we made \u003cem\u003eWhen I Think of You in a Castle\u003c\/em\u003e, that was near the start of \u003cem\u003eStranger Things\u003c\/em\u003e,” Keery recalls. “And now with it kind of coming to an end in my own life, 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.” A big part of that process was focusing on the experience rather than putting pressure on an outcome. “We all agreed that even if we went and just hung out, we’d be happy with it,” Toledo says. “We're just heartfelt, sentimental, and emotional, but there was a real positivity and optimism among us.” They would set up camp at the Indiana home of their friends Malcolm Brown and Charles Glanders, an A-frame tucked into some woodlands with massive windows for views of the fall foliage. In addition to the lush surroundings, the band’s hosts pitched in: Glanders engineered the tracks with Allison, while Brown inspired via chef-caliber meals. “We got back to our roots, hanging out and writing music without the expectations or pressure,” Hirshland says.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe creativity driven by comfort is apparent from the opening instrumental track; “Malcolm’s Cooking” was recorded in part on a balcony overlooking the woods, complete with the humid wind, insect whirring, and euphorically clinking bottles. Lead single “Last Goodbye” follows, a slow-loping look at the end of a relationship, a point in time somehow both uneasy and familiar. “I try to love every corner of your mind\/ But we’ve been going off the deep end,” they sing, buffeted by choppy acoustic, prickly electric staccato, and waves of harmony. There’s a vintage AM radio glow to follow-up “Pie in the Sky”, a giddy-up bass and thumping percussion giving way to layered harmony. “Make me wanna sell my soul for just a bit of your shine\/ How am I gonna fill this hole, if your heart ain’t mine?” they sigh in a fit of honest, unadorned adoration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“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.” Keery agrees, noting both how close they’ve remained and also much has changed since their last work together. \"We're all still such great friends, but now everybody has a lot more experience under their belts,\" he says. \"I was just appreciative to be spending this time, knowing we might not get another chance to do this the way we're doing it right now. The record reflects that enjoyment, and you can feel the fun.\" Not only did the six members work closely together, each brought in song ideas and took their turn taking the lead. In perhaps the most intimate example, the glistening, punchy “Maybe You Have To” opens with a voicemail of Toledo’s abuela prior to her passing. The track that follows stares at the pain of that loss, unflinchingly. “The song is about coming to terms with death, with the absence of someone you love,” he says. “She was a warrior.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEven when \u003cem\u003eIRON\u003c\/em\u003e touches on heavy themes, Post Animal finds fluidity and strength in their compositions—a clear result of sharing so much time together. Members of the group would come and go from the home studio, a free-flowing stream of ideas. “This is the easiest experience I’ve had making an album,” Williams says. Reyes agrees, noting that ease comes from understanding—and growing from—your past: “It’s a return to ourselves, but down the road, feeling better than we ever have.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout the album, Post Animal use that honed edge to push and pull at genre threads, imbuing some synthpop here and some folk there, vintage radio rock on one track and twitchy psychedelia on the next. Like the six sides of a die, the members of Post Animal each brought their own energy and style into an interconnected whole. Whether in the tumbling, interlocking eighth notes of the sugary “Common Denominator” or the cloudlike, piano-driven title track, \u003cem\u003eIRON\u003c\/em\u003e lives deliciously in its moment, in the room. Or, as Hirshland explains it: “This is an exploration of being alive and in this group of friends.” The beguiling “Setting Sun” churns and flares across that spectrum, opening on a burnt synth wash, a chunky electric guitar matching the lead vocals step for step. Psych pop “Dorien Kregg”, meanwhile, taps into some Elephant 6 orchestral energy, Allison taking on the mantle of the title character with childlike glee. “I remember Jake coming home from a grocery run and I was standing in the driveway being a creep, channeling this character,” Allison laughs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSurreal ideas like that only come about (let alone get chased down to such a brilliant conclusion) with the punchy energy that comes from a month of working this closely together. \u003cem\u003eIRON\u003c\/em\u003e puts the listener directly into the room with the band, freewheeling and experimental yet played with precision. That atmosphere should be palpable as the band hits the road with Keery’s Djo project, Toledo and Reyes pulling double duty as well by working in his backing band—the whole group getting to spend even more time together. “We’re having fun making things that we’re proud of. 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