Iron

When Post Animal stepped into the studio for their new album Iron, it was the first time all six original members were in the studio together for nearly a decade. Three band members had recently relocated away from Chicago, not to mention Joe Keery having left the band in 2017 to focus on acting. In the end they started right back up at the beginning, rediscovering that uncompromising closeness of connection they all shared from those endless hours spent in practice spaces and the late-night diner runs that follow. The product of a few straight weeks together, Iron not only finds them reunited with Keery, but is the embodiment of 30 days of camaraderie and unbound musical exploration, their renewed connection ironclad. The album uses that honed edge to push and pull at genre threads, from synthpop to folk, vintage radio rock to twitchy psychedelia.

Iron 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, Wesley Toledo and Javi Reyes pulling double duty as well by working in his backing band—the whole group getting to spend even more time together. “All of these creative forces coming together, it was like iron sharpening iron,” Dalton Allison says. “When we’re in proximity with one another, we make each other better.”